Photonics in Switching: introduction to the feature ... - OSA Publishing

Vol. 6, No. 11 / November 2007 / JOURNAL OF OPTICAL NETWORKING

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Photonics in Switching: introduction to the feature issue Lena Wosinska Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) / ICT Sweden Madeleine Glick Intel Research Published October 18, 2007 (Doc. ID 88189)

This issue of the Journal of Optical Networking focuses on the technology and architecture of optical switching nodes, including the architectural and algorithmic aspects of high-speed optical networks. Technologies based on dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) systems allow data transmission with bit rates of Tb/s on a single fiber. To facilitate this enormous transmission volume, high-capacity and high-speed network nodes become inevitable in the optical network. WDM switching, optical burst switching (OBS), and optical packet switching (OPS) are promising technologies for harnessing the bandwidth of WDM optical fiber networks in a highly flexible and efficient manner. As a number of key optical component technologies approach maturity, photonics in switching is becoming an increasingly attractive and practical solution for the next generation of optical networks. The feature attracted 38 submissions, from which 18 were accepted for publication after revisions. The accepted contributions addressed the following research areas: • Optical circuit switching: OCS node architecture and performance, OCS network design and analysis. • Optical packet switching: OPS networks and nodes, including contention resolution, switch fabric, and optical memory • Optical burst switching: quality of service support in OBS network The following papers are related to OCS node architectures, performance, and networks. In "ZL-switching matrix: an optimal scalable free-space strictly nonblocking twodimensional optical cross connect architecture," S. S. Abdallah and J. T.-W. Yeow propose a scalable 2D switching matrix for large-scale optical switches. "Comparative study of existing OADM and OXC architectures and technologies from the failure behavior perspective," by P. G. Arbués, C. Mas Machuca, and A. Tzanakaki presents a comparison of different OCS node architectures and technologies from the failure behavior point of view. In "Optical cross-connect architectures with the ability to tailor transmission properties," C. Matrakidis, C. (T.) Politi, and A. Stavdas propose the tunable dispersion compensating devices as switching elements in order to achieve the optimum balance between chromatic dispersion and nonlinearity in an optical core network. To meet the fault tolerance and ensure high availability in the presence of faults in a high-performance computing system nD-RAPID (reconfigurable and scalable all-photonic interconnect for distributed and parallel systems) a multidimensional optoelectronic architecture was proposed. The fault-tolerant routing algorithm provides optimum performance in © 2007 Optical Society of America

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the absence of faults and shows minimal degradation in the presence of faults and can tolerate a reasonable number of faults. In "nD-RAPID: a multidimensional scalable fault-tolerant optoelectronic interconnection for high-performance computing systems," by C. Kochar, A. Kodi, and A. Louri, the proposed on-board switching mechanism dynamically reconfigures itself to reroute packets around faulty links. Obviously, the innovative optical-switch fabrics must meet performance goals. This subject is discussed in "Bit error rate and cross-talk performance in optical cross connect with wavelength converter," where M. S. Islam and S. P. Majumder present an analytical approach for modeling cross talk and evaluating the bit error rate (BER) performance in a WDM network for link with optical cross connect (OXC). Factors affecting the magnitude of cross talk in the OXC are investigated and identified, and the effects of OXC-induced cross talk on the BER performance are evaluated at a bit rate of 10 Gbits/s. In "Cost effectiveness of protection schemes for IP-over-WDM networks," N. S. C. Correia and M. C. R. Medeiros examine the cost related to IP protection and WDM shared protection. "Efficient use of protection bandwidth and switching resources in optical WDM networks," by E. D. Manley, H. S. Hamza, and J. S. Deogun proposes a method for efficient resource utilization in terms of both bandwidth and switching resources in protected optical WDM networks. In "Conversion cascading constraint-aware adaptive routing for WDM optical networks," X. Gao, M. A. Bassiouni, and G. Li examine the negative impact of wavelength conversion cascading on the performance of all-optical routing. In "Design and analysis of strictly nonblocking WDM optical-switching networks," by H. S. Hamza and J. S. Deogun, two novel strictly nonblocking crossbar-like WDM networks are proposed and used to design two new classes of Clos-type switching networks. Analysis of hardware complexity shows that the proposed designs can achieve up to 30% reduction in overall cost compared with other WDM switching networks while using a smaller number of stages. In "Plug and play optical nodes: network functionalities and built-in fiber characterization techniques," I. Cerutti, A. Fumagalli, R. Hui, P. Monti, Alberto Paradisi, and M. Tacca point out the challenges for networks employing plug and play optical nodes and present solutions based on plug and play optical node hardware architectures. Optical packet switching networks and nodes are addressed in the following papers. "Time-to-live decrementing scheme in optical packet switching," by Y. Ling, K. Qiu, Y. Pang, and W. Zhang proposes a novel scheme for decrementing one time-to-live pulse based on an asymmetric Mach–Zehnder interferometer and a Fabry–Perot semiconductor optical amplifier. In "Prioritized retransmission in slotted all-optical packet-switched networks," by A. G. P. Rahbar and O. Yang, an all-optical slotted packet-switched network interconnected by bufferless all-optical switches with contention-based operation is considered with the objective to reduce the cost of the expensive contention resolution hardware. In "Combining contention resolution schemes in WDM optical packet switches with multifiber interfaces," by G. Muretto and C. Raffaelli, optical packet switch architectures with multifiber interfaces are considered to combine space, wavelength, and time-domain contention resolution. Contention resolution in OPS is also addressed in "Comparative study of limited-range wavelength conversion policies for asynchronous optical packet switching," by K. Dogan, Y. Gunalay, and N. Akar. In this paper an asynchronous optical packet (OP)-switching node equipped with a number of limited-range wavelength converters shared per output link is proposed and evaluated. It is shown that the far-conversion policy for which the optical packet is switched onto the farthest available wavelength in the tuning range outperforms

© 2007 Optical Society of America

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the other policies we studied. "Optical loop memory for photonic switching application," by R. Srivastava, R. Kumar Singh, and Y. N. Singh proposes architecture for a WDM-based photonic packet switch. The main advantage of this architecture is that no controlling is required inside the buffer. Packet loss probability and delay are evaluated. Semiconductor optical amplifiers are often used in optical switching fabrics. Two papers deal specifically with aspects related to these devices. "Two-wavelength switching with 1550 nm semiconductor laser amplifiers," by A. Hurtado and M. J. Adams presents an approach using two-wavelength switching operation between two signals at different wavelengths using the optical bistability occurring in two different semiconductor laser amplifiers. A theoretical model is shown to analyze the wavelength switching operation with a novel amplifier type. In "Development and fabrication of monolithically integrated optical packet switches," D. A. Yanson, M. Silver, O. Vassalli, M. Campbell, G. Masterton, S. D. McDougall, and J. H. Marsh report on activities toward realization of fully integrated 1x2, 2x2, and 4x4 crosspoint optical switches for WDM-packet-based data networking. Two enabling technologies, quantum-well intermixing and etched turning mirrors, are developed and demonstrated. Finally, optical burst switching is addressed in "Analysis and design of edge-based controllers supporting absolute QoS for optical bursts," by M. Jin and O. W. W. Yang. In this paper a new edge-based controlling scheme to achieve a guaranteed loss performance for an optical burst flow is presented. The control system does not affect the packet transmission load, which is especially useful for such critical applications as multimedia streams and can be applied to various networks using different assembly algorithms, signaling protocols, contention resolution methods, or varying network inputs.

© 2007 Optical Society of America