Photonic Slot Routing

Abstract

Chapters 2 through 7 are devoted to various issues related to the wavelengthrouted WDM networks. An emerging alternative to the wavelength-routed WDM network is a WDM network based on optical packet switching. One recently proposed approach to optical packet switching is Photonic Slot Routing (PSR) [97, 98]. In PSR, time is slotted, and data is transmitted in the form of photonic slots which are fixed in length and span across all wavelengths in the network. Each wavelength in the photonic slot may contain a single packet, and all packets in the photonic slot are destined to the same node. By requiring the packets to have the same destination, the photonic slot may be routed as a single integrated unit without the need for demultiplexing individual wavelengths at intermediate nodes. Thus, wavelength-insensitive components may be used at each node, resulting in less complexity, faster routing, and lower network cost [97,99].