Abstract

Optical switching based on fast tunable lasers offers the possibility of building packet switches of large capacity.¹ We previously reported a laser especially fitted for this application.² This laser can be discretely tuned by a single current to a set of regularly spaced frequencies, and can be switched rapidly among these frequencies. As importantly, the same comb of frequencies can be obtained from a batch of lasers fabricated by the same lithographic process. Furthermore, the frequency values are relatively insensitive to variations of the tuning current around the current values giving access to the set of frequencies. These features can greatly simplify the implementation of an optical packet switch based on wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM). We report what we believe is the first demonstration of optical packet switching between ten different destinations at a bit rate of 3 Gbit/s based on this laser.

© 1992 Optical Society of America