Advances in photonic packet switching systems

This paper overviews the research and development trends of optical networks moving to high capacity, intelligent and packet switching. The advantage of optical packet switching is that by dividing the information into packets, it can fully utilize the bandwidth statistically by sharing a wavelength pass and obtains high capacity with higher efficiency and flexibility. The core technologies of optical packet switching are the transferring, routing, wavelength converting, buffering and forwarding of optical packets. A few approaches to realize these technologies are briefly introduced including optical burst switching, optical label switching and all-optical time division multiplexing switching. The implementation of optical packet switching is difficult at present, and mainly is limited by the need for optical memory and photonic integrated circuits with optical logic function. For this reason, creative new concepts and novel photonic devices are crucial issues for the research work and commercialization of optical packet switched networks.