This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
Project Proposed: This project, developing a dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) multi-mode switching platform instrument, supports telesurgery, telemedicine, and heterogeneous applications by allowing different types of messages within an application to choose from three switching modes: (electronic packet switching (EPS), optical burst switching (OBS), and optical circuit switching (OCS). While using the EPS mode to transfer short robotic control messages, applications such as telesurgery are expected to benefit from the approach by using the OBS mode or the OCS mode to transfer the ultra high bandwidth multi-view 3-D high definition (HD) video. The multi-mode switching platform will be developed using high performance reconfigurable field programmable gate array (FPGA) system along with optical switching nodes. The platform developed can be made available remotely to networking researchers and to the GENI infrastructure. The DWDM multi-mode switching platform enabled by the router architecture allows the three switching paradigms mentioned above (i.e., EPS, OBS, and OCS) to be supported on the same router platform, providing the greatest flexibility to applications. Each DWDM channel in an optical fiber can be individually reconfigured to a different switching mode based on the dynamic traffic load. Additionally, the approach allows individual application or individual type of messages within an application to be transported using the best-suited switching mode to achieve the best performance.
Broader Impacts: This work can change the way quality medical services that can be delivered. Telesurgery and telemedicine allow medical experts and resources to be shared remotely by residents who do not have local access to such resources. While fostering research opportunities and collaborations in router designs, network management, and application designs, the platform instrument under development can provide research infrastructure to networking researchers and potentially unify the two often-divided research communities: the electronic packet switching and the optical switching. The female investigator serves as a mentor in WELCOME (Women for Engineering Learning Community for Maximizing Excellence), actively recruiting and retaining women in engineering. She is hosting two minority Harmony Science Academy students.
