280Gb/s hybrid optical switching demonstration combining circuit and multi-wavlength packet

In this paper, we design a novel hybrid optical network architecture combining both MW-OPS and OCS, and experimentally demonstrate its feasibility in a 280-Gbps network testbed.

I. Introduction

Due to the emergence of various applications, multi-level network services such as DiffServ is expected to be required in a future Internet. In order to provide such services, a hybrid approach combining optical burst and circuit switches has been researched [1]. To fully utilize the ultra-broad bandwidth as well as fine granularity of optical packet switching, implementation of multi-wavelength optical packet switching (MW-OPS) is attractive. We have recently proposed a novel hybrid optical network architecture combining both MW-OPS and OCS [2]. MW-OPS is one class of OPS architectures capable of reducing the number of optical devices by switching a wavelength-multiplexed optical packet with a single wideband optical switch. Each packet consists of a header encoded into one particular wavelength and a payload encoded into possibly multiple other wavelengths [3]. In this paper, we discuss design and implementation of its node architecture.