Chlamtac, Imrich NCR-9406522 University of Massachusetts A Generalized Approach to WDM Optical Packet Switched Networks: Third generation "all-optical" networks are advocated to yield a nearly four orders of magnitude capacity increase by circumventing the speed limitations of electronics. In an optical packet switched network it is necessary to have a methodology to deal optically with the fundamental resource contentions problem occurring when multiple packets are concurrently vying for key optical network resources. These can be transmitters, receivers, switches, and channels. To realize the optical capacity of the fiber, i.e., eliminate the electronic bottleneck, resource contention must be resolved in a way which maintains packets flowing through the network in the optical domain. One possible solution is based on the use of optical switches and fiber delay lines to realize an all-optical switch termed Switched Delay Lines (SDL). Among the advantages demonstrated for this approach are its relative simplicity, implementation potential and excellent performance. The goal of this research is the extension of the above solution to the case of wavelength sensitive switches, targeted towards the emerging WDM based communications environment. Preliminary results show that an SDL WDM solution can offer: 1) an optical WDM packet switching transmission; 2) use of attractive hardware design based on small number of delay lines, minimal functionality switches, replacement of fast tunability by WDM filtering; 3) fault tolerance; and 4) feasible electronic control. The research results of this study can be expected to lay a basis for the next generation optical packet switched LAN/MAN WDM networks. It will thus enable the use of WDM in LAN and MAN communication systems for multiplexing several high speed data streams onto the optical fiber, without requiring unrealistic parallel electronic processing. As a result, the throughput potential of optical networks may be increased by orders of magnitude paving the way for future applications.
