FPGA-Based Label Processor for Low Latency and Large Port Count Optical Packet Switches

Optical packet switching (OPS) is being considered as one of the switching technologies for a future optical internet. For contention resolution in an optical packet switching (OPS) system, the wavelength dimension is generally used in combination with a fibre delay line (FDL) buffer. In this study, the authors propose to reduce the number of tunable wavelength converters (TWCs) by sharing TWCs for cost-effective design of an asynchronous OPS system with a shared or an output FDL buffer. Asynchronous and variable-length packets are considered in the OPS system design. To investigate the number of TWCs needed for the OPS system, an algorithm is proposed, which searches for an available TWC and an unused internal wavelength, as well as an outgoing channel. This algorithm is applied to an OPS system with a shared or an output FDL buffer. Also, the number of internal wavelengths (i.e. the conversion range of the TWC) needed for an asynchronous OPS system is presented for cost reduction of the OPS system.

The advantages of Optical Packet Switching (OPS) are transparent data transmission and data format, flexible packet control and dynamic resource allocation. It thus can support high-speed transmission of wideband data networks. Unlike Optical Burst Switching (OBS) systems which need reserved channel to transmit destination address, an advanced OPS solution using Optical Orthogonal Code (OOC) label for payload transfer has been proposed in this paper. Different from other OPS systems, our edge nodes are required to realize some special tasks including extracting destination addresses of the received IP packet which is used as payload in our OPS systems and sending the addresses to the OOC label generator. The OOC label will later be used to identify the destination of each payload at the core node for optical switching. Meanwhile, the higher-priority flow can be prior-serviced according to the Type of Service (TOS) in the head of IP packet. It is experimentally shown that the edge nodes in this OPS system can effectively improve the efficiency of packet switching and the speed of data transmission. The edge node implementation contains two parts: the hardware and software. For the hardware part, all necessary modules have been integrated onto one PCB board, thus avoiding possible instability caused by interconnecting different modules like transmitting/receiving Ethernet frame module, Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) processing module and optical transceiver module etc. from different Printed Circuit Boards (PCB). For the software part, the whole of system was based on MicroC/OS-II operating systems running on the Nios II soft core processor. It is verified by the experiment that embedded system designed with Nios II soft core CPU can help to speed up the hardware design. With the SOPC Builder's development environment, more attention can be paid to the structure and function of the system without worrying about the details of the circuit design, and better performance on system stability and reliability could be achieved at the same time.

We develop an integrated optical packet and circuit switching node in which signaling via optical packet switching is implemented. We demonstrate 80 (8λ × 10) Gbit/s optical packet switching with <;1E-4 packet-loss-rate, 8-lightpaths establishment, and dynamic wavelength-resources control.

We propose a single-input multiple-output en/decoder, which can simultaneously and flexibly generate and separate a group of independent optical codes in the different optical paths with a specific permutation and combination of code patterns. We demonstrate the en/decoder for all-optical label processing in an optical packet switching system.

In optical packet switching (OPS) and optical code division multiple access (OCDMA) systems, label generation and processing are key technologies. Recently, several label processors have been proposed and demonstrated. However, in order to recognize N different labels, N separate devices are required. Here, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a large-scale, multiple optical code (OC)-label generation and processing technology based on multi-port, a fully tunable optical spectrum synthesizer (OSS) and a multi-wavelength electro-optic frequency comb generator. The OSS can generate 80 different OC-labels simultaneously and can perform 80-parallel matched filtering. We also demonstrated its application to OCDMA.

An all-optical label recognition method is proposed, which is based on the fiber Bragg grating encoder/decoder and a semiconductor optical amplifier, employing multiple two-dimensional optical orthogonal codes for optical label in optical packet switching system. The program effectively reduces the code autocorrelation/cross-correlation requirements of label identification and removes the cross-correlation pulses after decoding, greatly increases the coding capacity and number of available labels, and improves the reliability of label identification, using the fiber Bragg grating as a decoder and four-wave mixing in the semiconductor optical amplifier. The feasibility of the method is validated by the simulation of OptiSystem software. The simulation also shows that the label has a relatively high extinction ratio and can be operated easily.

This paper deals with massive number of optical code (OC) label generation and recognition for scalable optical packet switching (OPS) networks. In order to expand the system scalability of code label processing, we develop a record port count 128 x 128 optical encoder/decoder (E/D) and propose a novel three-dimensional (3-D) optical label combining code label with wavelength and polarization. In the experiment, we conduct a proof-of-concept demonstration of 4-code x 2-wavelength x 2-polarization and validate that the 3-D labeling scheme can consequently increase the available number of code label up to more than 1,000 labels. Real-time labeling performance using a field programmable gate array (FPGA)-based processor and crosstalk influence at an optical switch are also experimentally evaluated.

By extensive simulations we investigate the influence of different modulation formats on the performance of a 640 Gbit/s/port optical packet switching system.

The experiment of multiple optical orthogonal codes （MOOC） sequences-based optical labels receiving is reported for the first time. In this work, 2 groups of MOOC with code length 19 and code weight 3 are used to identify optical labels. This paper firstly presents the scheme and principle of optical packets switching networks based on MOOC sequences-based optical labels. Since optical labels contain the optical packet switching and routing information, optical label processing is crucial to achieve successfully packets switching. Therefore, the importance of MOOC-based optical labels processing with multiple inconsecutive, random and burst characteristics in optical packets switching network is pointed out. Considering the MOOC-based optical labels, we design a circuit consisting of widened net and multi-level concatenated amplifiers to receive multiple single-optical-label pulse with a period of 2 ns and low power. The experimental results show that the designed scheme is feasible.

We propose a cost effective optical packet switching system using shared wavelength converter pool. We also present its cost model and show the overall system cost for the target performance. The benefits of the proposed system is compared with the conventional approaches in terms of blocking performance and overall system cost.

Optical Burst Switching and Packet Switching require the adoption of suitable contention resolution mechanisms at the optical nodes due to multiple packets/bursts attempting to access the shared output channel at the same time. Contentions can be solved by exploiting the space, wavelength and time domain. The many alternatives possible call for suitable scheduling policy aiming at an optimal system performance. This paper provides an assessment of the role of key parameters for an optical packet/burst contention resolution scheme and the resulting node cost estimation in terms of CAPEX, footprint and power consumption. Feasibility tradeoffs due to limited optical buffering and wavelength conversion capability are also taken into account.

The service evolution and the rapid increase in traffic levels fuel the interest toward switching paradigms enabling the fast allocation of Wavelength Division Multiplexing WDM channels in an on demand fashion with fine granularities (microsecond scales). For this reason, in the last years, different optical switching paradigms have been proposed (Sabella et al., 2000): optical-packet switching (OPS), optical-burst switching (OBS), wavelength-routed OBS, etc. Among the various all-optical switching paradigms, OPS attracts increasing attention. Owing to the high switching rate, Semiconductor Optical Amplifier (SOA) is a key technology to realize Optical Packet Switches. We propose some Optical Packet Switch (OPS) architectures and illustrate their realization in SOA technology. The effectiveness of the technology in reducing the power consumption is also analyzed. The chapter is organized in three sections. The main blocks (Switching Fabric, Wavelength Conversion stage, Synchronization stage) of an OPS are illustrated in Section 2 where we also show some examples of realizing wavelength converters and synchronizers in SOA technology. Section 3 introduces SOA-based single-stage and multi-stage switching fabrics. Finally the SOA-based OPS power consumption is investigated in Section 4.

We demonstrate end-to-end 25Gb/s true optical packet switching featuring burst-mode reception with $\text{Hipo}\lambda\text{aos}$ Optical Packet Switch architecture. Error-free performance at 10−9 was obtained for all validated port-combinations.

Modeling and performance analysis of a data center network (DCN) combining optical packet switching (OPS) and agile optical circuit switching (OCS) in a unified platform are presented. Hybrid optoelectronic packet routers which combine optical switching fabric and electronic buffers are used, supporting 100 Gbit/s (25 Gbit/s × 4 wavelengths) optical packets. OCS transmission is implemented by a novel “express path,” (ExP) an instant wavelength path on demand, which enables certain flows following the ExP with no packet contention, whereas ordinary OPS packets are switched with a deflection routing algorithm and buffering for contention resolution. This architecture can support OCS for large and reliability-sensitive data transferring and OPS for latency-sensitive applications. The performance of the network is investigated via numerical simulations of top-of-rack switch (ToR)-to-ToR traffic in an N-dimensional (up to 4096 node) torus topology. We have made the following observations: 1) torus topology results in high throughput and can be scaled out by increasing the dimension; 2) contention resolution between OPS and agile OCS is needed and our proposed strategies enhance the overall performance; and 3) in a lightly to moderately loaded case of OPS traffic, more than 100 ExPs can be supported simultaneously with acceptable affect on OPS.

In this paper, tunable multiple optical orthogonal codes sequences (MOOCS)-based optical labels for optical packet switching (OPS) are experimentally demonstrated. The tunable MOOCS-based optical label scheme is performed by using fiber Bragg grating (FBG)-based optical en/decoders group and optical switches controlled by Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), the pulse for MOOCS-based optical label is performed, and multiple single-optical labels are also successfully received. These experimental results show that the scheme for optical label is effective.