The single-hop star-based network is proposed as a feasible topology to fit the rapidly-increasing bandwidth requirement in the AAPN research project. This paper investigates the node architecture to implement all-optical operations in such a network using available technologies. Based on the node placement in the network, two architectures are designed, one is placed in the edge and another one is used in the core. The edge node is a multi-stage electronic/optic switch, which aggregates legacy traffics and transmits them to the core node, or accepts optical messages from the core node and sends them to legacy networks. Each stage uses either electronic or optical components to implement signal storage, conversion or transmission. The core node is an all-optical switch which switches optical signals in different wavelength planes, while the controlling part works in electronic domain. A separate control plane is designed to manipulate the operation of different component devices. This system provides a common platform for the overlaid-star network. By introducing synchronization or not, we can employ reservation-based optical time-division-multiplexing (OTDM) or contention-based optical burst switching (OBS) in the designed architecture. No wavelength conversion or optical buffering is necessary by agilely scheduling the messages in both mechanisms. Our research is an efficient and feasible solution which satisfies the transmission requirement by taking into account of technological availability. Our design is supported by the performance evaluation of OTDM and OBS methods, and their comparisons under different scenarios.

Date Published: 13 October 2005
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 5970, Photonic Applications in Devices and Communication Systems, 59702Y (13 October 2005); doi: 10.1117/12.630014

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 5970:
Photonic Applications in Devices and Communication Systems
Peter Mascher; John C. Cartledge; Andrew Peter Knights; David V. Plant, Editor(s)