Optical Switching

Switch Fabrics, Techniques and Architectures

원종호 (INC lab)

Oct 30, 2006
Outline
 Introduction

 Optical Switch

 Optical Packet Switch

 Optical Burst Switch

 GMPLS

 Conclusion

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Introduction
 Internet traffic has doubled per year
 New services like VOD, IPTV
 DWDM (Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing) is developed
– Can transport tens to hundreds of wavelengths per fiber

 Then, What is problem?

– Slow O/E/O conversion.
– Electronic equipment is dependent on the data rate &
protocol. (non-transparent)
 Goal?
– All optical!

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Optical switch - OXC

 What is Optical Cross-Connect (OXC)?

Switch
– Set up light paths
Fabric
 Electrical XC, All-optical XC, Opaque XC
Electrical XC All-optical XC
Process O/E/O (slow) O/O/O (fast)
Data rate & format
No Yes
Transparent?
Implementation Easy Hard

 Major difficulties of All-optical XC

– The lack of processing at bit level in optical domain
– The lack of efficient buffering in optical domain
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Optical switch - Optical Switch Fabrics

 Optical Switch Fabrics

– Allow switching directly in the optical domain (All-optical)

 Important parameters
– Switching time (↓)
– Insertion loss (↓ and loss uniformity at all input-output
connections)
– Crosstalk (↓)
– Extinction ratio (ratio of ON-OFF power) (↑)
– Polarization-dependent loss (↓)
– Reliability, energy usage, scalability, temperature resistance

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Optical switch - Optical Switch Fabrics

 Main optical switching technologies

– Opto-mechanical Switch
• Use prisms, mirrors, directional couplers.
• Lack of scalability
– Micro-electro-mechanical System Device (MEMS)
• Use tiny reflective surfaces to redirect the light
• 2D-MEMS(on-off mirror)
• 3D-MEMS(movable mirror)
• Scalability
• low loss
• short switching time
• Low power consumption
• Low crosstalk
• Low polarization effect
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Optical switch - Optical Switch Fabrics

– Electro-optic Switch
• Use a directional coupler
• Its coupling ratio is changed by varying the refractive index

– Thermo-optic Switch
– Liquid-Crystal Switch
– Bubble Switch
– Acousto-optic Switch

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Optical switch - Optical Switch Fabrics

Optomechanical
MEMS Electro-optic
Switch

Switching time Milliseconds Milliseconds Nanoseconds

Insertion loss Low Low High

PDL Low Low high

Scalability Bad Good Bad

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Optical switch – large switches
 Main considerations in building Large switch
– Number of small switches required
– Loss uniformity
– Number of crossovers
• cause power loss, crosstalk
– Blocking Characteristics
• Blocking vs. non-blocking

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Optical Packet Switching
 Optical Circuit Switching
– Limited circuit
– Low efficiency (due to fixed bandwidth)

 Optical Packet Switching

– Using Packet ( = Header (for routing) + Data )

 If Optical Packet Switching is realized, it can

– allocate WDM channels on demand (microsecond)
– share network resource efficiently
– support burst traffic efficiently
– offer high-speed data rate/format transparency &
configurability

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Optical Packet Switching
 What is the problem in implementing OPS?
– Long Switching time
– Buffer is needed
 Long switching time is due to
– Extracting the routing information from the header
– Controlling switching matrix electronically
– Performing the switching and buffering functions
 Buffer at Optical domain is needed
– Data should be buffered while header is processed
– When a contention is occurred
– When the bandwidth is not sufficient
 We don’t have perfect solutions yet.
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Optical Packet Switching
 Contention Resolution
– Buffering
• Using FDL (Fiber Delay Line)
– bulky, expensive, indefinite, Quality degradation
• Solutions to reduce the number of FDLs,
– synchronous manner
– Use TOWC (Tunable optical wavelength converter)

– Deflection routing
• Only one packet – desired link, others – longer links
• There can be the looping of packets

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 Optical Packet Switching
 Architecture
Output
Input

O/E interface: FDL

extract the header info.SNU INC lab.
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 Optical Packet Switching
 Shared Wavelength Converters

Reduce Tunable
Wavelength
converter
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Optical Burst Switching
 Switch the channels entirely in the optical domain
using electronic tech.

 Process
– Assemble the packets (have same destination) -> make bursts
at the edge
– Bursts are assigned to wavelength channels
– Switched through transparently without any conversion
– Disassemble into the original packets

 No need for Optical buffer.

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Optical Burst Switching
 How is it possible?
– reservation request
(control packet)
– Using offset-time

reservation

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Optical Burst Switching
 QoS Support Bigger offset, lower
probability of discard

Low priority burst

 Optical Composite Burst Switching Not discarded

– Minimize packet loss

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The future of Optical switching

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GMPLS - Generalized Multiprotocol Label Switching

 Extends common control plane to support various

interfaces.

 GMPLS can support

– Packet switching
– Time-division
(SONET/SDH) +
– MPλS (wavelength
switching) +
– Spatial-switching
(OXC)

 It can support integrated control and management

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Conclusion
 Optical fiber is not fully exploited
 Switching functions must be executed optically
 Two obstacles
– The lack of optical memory
– processing capabilities in optical domain
 In the future, breakthroughs may counteract
the fundamental limitations of optics
 Then, current network is completely changed

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