Multicasting in a High-Port Sub- \mu sec Latency Hipo \lambda aos Optical Packet Switch

• Published in: IEEE photonics technology letters Vol. 30; no. 17; pp. 1535 - 1538
• Main Authors: Terzenidis, N., Moralis-Pegios, M., Mourgias-Alexandris, G., Vyrsokinos, K., Pleros, N.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01-09-2018; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Adaptive optics; Broadband; Configurations; Data center; disaggregated data centers; Egress; Mach-Zehnder interferometers; Multicast communication; Multicasting; Optical attenuators; Optical buffering; optical fiber delay line; Optical fibers; optical multicast; optical packet switches; Optical packet switching; Optical switches; Packets (communication); Semiconductor optical amplifiers; Switching theory; Waveguide routers; Wavelength routeing
• ISSN: 1041-1135; 1941-0174
• DOI: 10.1109/LPT.2018.2859032

We demonstrate a Hipoλaos optical packet switch (OPS) configuration that can support optical data multicasting in a sub-μsec 256-port layout. The proposed multicast OPS relies on the low-latency and high-port Hipoλaos OPS architecture, extending its capabilities from unito multicast operation through simple modifications at its egress wavelength-routing stage. It exploits the WDM cyclic properties of the arrayed waveguide grating router stage in conjunction with multi-wavelength conversion (WC) in semiconductor optical amplifier-Mach-Zehnder interferometer (SOA-MZI) toward scaling from a unito a multicast OPS design, with the level of multi-wavelength WC defining the multicast degree. Optical multicasting up to five nodes is experimentally demonstrated at 10 Gb/s, revealing error-free operation at 10 -9 with less than 2-dB power penalty compared with the unicast operation. The broadband operational characteristics of the multicast operation have been also investigated at 10 Gb/s, utilizing pairs of wavelengths with different channel spacing and validating the multicast credentials of the switch across all the necessary wavelength channels for a 256-port configuration. Finally, a mixed traffic scenario involving both unicast and multicast optical traffic is demonstrated at 10 Gb/s, revealing error-free performance for all cases, with a <;0.2 dB excess power penalty of multicasted packets over the unicast data.