Vertically-Integrated Primitives for a Bufferless All-Optical Packet-Switched Network

It is well accepted that in the long-term future, high-speed, highly efficient optical networks must migrate from being circuit switched to ultimately packet switched. One of the key functions for any efficient packet-based network is the ability to avoid contention and blocking by using local buffers at the switching nodes. However, after more than 20 years of research, there has been scant progress in developing a practical all-optical buffer. We propose to research the fundamental building blocks (i.e., "primitives") across different disciplines that will truly enable a bufferless packet-switched all-optical network. Our new statistical multicasting algorithms will significantly reduce the packet loss probability as well as reduce the complexity of each switching node inside the core network.
Our research program will be vertically integrated, to investigate unique fundamental primitives including devices, systems, and network architectures. We will investigate the key functionalities, opportunities, and limitations when combining these primitives across these diverse disciplines.
We will demonstrate a new repetition/statistical algorithm code at the packet level in which packets are replicated at the transmitter array and sent along different network paths that will minimize the packet latency. This algorithm will accommodate and adjust to the transmission and device limitations that exist at the physical layer. Implementing this scheme will require unique wavelength-tunable laser devices that can be tuned in a few ns, a novel 3-dimensional fast(ns) high-port-count optical s switch, the transmission and reception of packets that are statistical multicast, and all-optical synchronization and packet-header recognition at a switching node. Given the statistical multicasting that is needed to achieve a bufferless network, our algorithm design will attempt to
conserve the use of the available spectral, temporal, and spatial domains. We will solve unique problems by enabling ultra-wide-wavelength-tunable lasers and by limiting the nonlinear interactions (i.e., Brillouin, FWM) when channel wavelength spacings decrease to below a fraction of the channel information bandwidth.