The ever-increasing demand for Internet bandwidth has renewed interest in photonic switching. This project aims to address the problem of switching speed in an optical network infrastructure within a rigorous framework that bridges research and education in several key areas of computer science and mathematics, including probabilistic methods, combinatorial analyses, switching theory, circuit complexity, and WDM network routing algorithms. An objective of the project is to completely characterize the trade-offs between various design options faced by photonic switch designers such as depth vs. size, and blocking behavior vs. cost.
The project involves the investigation of (a) novel WDM switching fabrics designs guided by practical criteria such as cost-effectiveness, speed, and scalability (b) models to analyze switches qualitatively and quantitatively using a graph-theoretic framework that also draws on techniques from circuit complexity and probabilistic methods (c) combinatorial models to probabilistically analyze switch designs and characterize design trade-offs, such as between cost and blocking behavior (d) online and offline routing algorithms that are formulated as problems in graph coloring.
