Abstract

Deflection routing¹ may be used in regular two-connected alloptical multihop fiber networks, such as the Manhattan Street network (MS)¹ and ShuffleNet (SN),² to ease the problems arising from all-optical buffering at intermediate nodes. The loss in efficiency of deflection routing with respect to the classical store-and-forward routing due to the increased average number of hops can be offset by the higher bit rates permitted by the all-optical channel so that the throughput, proportional to the bit rate, can be increased.³ However, the bit rate is constrained by the maximum allowed packet error rate. In the all-optical approach no regeneration of the optical signal can be provided at intermediate nodes nor can error control be performed on a link-by-link basis. Under deflection routing, repeatedly deflected packets travel long distances before reaching their destination and are thus more likely to be in error at the receiver, particularly at very high bit rates.

© 1993 Optical Society of America