| Several packet switching architectures based on wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) are proposed. Their performances of optical power budget and crosstalk are analyzed by computer simulations.;Two kinds of all optical packet switches with optical memory to store the contended packets optically are first proposed. One is the shared-buffer optical packet switch and the other is the output-buffered optical packet switch. Due to the sharing property of the shared-buffer switch, it is less complex than the switch based on the output- buffered principle. Both of them can provide the best throughput/delay performance and multicasting functions. As a key component to these two switches, optical memory is introduced and some issues of its storage time, including its impact on the complexity of switches are addressed. The scalability between the storage time of optical memory and the number of wavelengths is also discussed.;Two kinds of optical interconnection networks based on WDM technology are described. Their complexity and optical performance, such as power budget, crosstalk evaluation, and bit error rate, are discussed as well. These two optical interconnection networks are bufferless and the packet storage, segmentation and reassembly, classification and filtering, buffer management, and packet scheduling are performed in the electronic packet switch modules. The first optical interconnection network based on the 3-stage Clos principle is modular in structure and uses available WDM technology. Due to its bufferless scheme, it does not experience serious amplified spontaneous emission by the optical amplifiers. To solve the issues of multicast function and wavelength assignment, Path-Switching based optical interconnection network is proposed. Several advantages of optical interconnection network based on Path-Switching approach are: First, it can support multicasting capacity. Second, the wavelength or path assignment can be predetermined by the capacity of virtual path capacity between the pair of input/output packet switch modules. That is, the connection pattern will be updated only if the traffic statistics change significantly, so that the slot-and-slot routing assignment needed in a dynamic packet switched routing scheme can be avoided. Third, all the optical devices are modular and the technology is available. In addition, due to the quasi-static routing nature of the Path-Switching approach, tunable lasers are not required and neither is a precise wavelength stable controller.;A broadcast-and-select optical interconnection network is introduced. Its hierarchical structure allows multicast functions to be performed and provides the modularity on the switch. Three possible kinds of fast tunable filters to perform wavelength selection function are also described and their complexity to the switch is shown. The bit error rates of the optical interconnection network with respect to different contrast ratios of an semiconductor optical amplifier gate are presented by computer simulations. In addition, the trade-offs between the complexity of the optical interconnection network related to the available wavelength number and the technology of these optical switching gates are illustrated. |
