Seminar Presentation

on
Optical Packet Switching.
Submitted in the partial fulfilment of requirement for the award of degree of

Bachelor of Engineering
In
Electronic and Communication Engineering

Submitted by
Simranjeet Singh
Roll no 150/16

Under the guidance of

Prof. Ajay Sharma.

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering

Mahant Bachittar Singh College of Engineering and Technology , Jammu.
2019
 OBJECTIVES
 INTRODUCTION.
 OPTICAL vs. ELECTRONIC NETWORKS.
 OPS.
 TYPES OF OPS.
 DELAY LINES.
 OPTICAL PACKET SWITCH SYSTEM.
 SWITCH FABRIC ARCHITECTURE
 CHALLENGES IN OPS.
 EXPERIMENTAL EFFORTS.
 ADVANTAGES.
 DISADVANTAGES.
 USES OF OPS.
 CONCLUSION.
 INTRODUCTION
 Packet switching is a method of grouping data that is transmitted over a digital network
into packets. Packets are made up of header and a payload.
 The concept of switching small blocks of data was first explored by Paul Baran at the RAND
corporation starting in the late 1950’s in the US.
 Donald Davies, a British computer scientist in 1965 is credited with coining the modern
term packet switching.
 Packet switching allows delivery of variable bit rate data streams , realized as sequences of
packets , over a computer network.
 Packet switching contrasts with another principal networking , circuit switching , a method
which pre-allocates dedicated network bandwidth specifically for each communication
session.
An animation showing packet switching across
a network.
Optical versus Electronic Networks
Optical
• More data is transferred.
• Maximum data rate is very high.
• No electromagnetic
interference.
• Inherent security.
• Infancy of technology.
Electronic
• Less data is transferred as
comparison.
• Maximum data rate is low.
• Electromagnetic interference.
• No inherent security.
• Maturity of technology.
 OPS
OPS stands for optical packet switching.
In OPS the payload(user data) is switched optically.
If the packet header is processed electronically , then this version of OPS is called
transparent OPS. If the packet header is processed optically , then this version of OPS is
called all-optical packet switching.
A general model of an optical packet-switched network is shown. Electronic access nodes
(AN) are connected to edge nodes(EN) which in turn are connected to core node(CN).
 Types of OPS
OPS can be either synchronous or asynchronous:
In synchronous OPS the time domain is divided into slots during which packets are sent and
received , and the duration of a packet is not longer than the time slot.
In asynchronous OPS the time domain is slotted , and so packets can arrive at any time.
This technology received less attention than the synchronous technology , even though it is
easier to build , because no synchronization is needed.
It has probably because the asynchronous OPS suffers of large contention probabilities in
comparison with the synchronous technology.
 Delay lines.
The lack of an efficient way to store information in optical domain represents a major
difficulty in the design of OPS nodes. Research has focused on ways of emulating electronic
RAM capabilities through the use of fiber delay lines(FDL’S) to delay optical signals.
These are of two types:
 Feed Forward FDLs
In a switch with feed-forward FDLs a packet may be buffered only once , when such a packet
emerges from the FDL after the specified delay , it is switched to an output port , and then
leaves the switch.
Feed-backward FDLs
In a switch with feed-backward FDLs , packet emerging from FDL may be buffered multiple
times by sending it(feeding it back) to the FDL; this situation may arise if the packet
experiences contention again after emerging from the FDL.
 Optical Packet Switch System

The input block of the switch extract the headers and interprets them.
Controller configures the switching fabric based on header data and the current state of
switching fabric.
An optical packet switch can have an optical delay line for delaying packets for a number of
time slots.
The output block adds headers to payloads.
 Switch Fabric Architectures
A wide variety of switch fabric architectures have been proposed for OPS. In general we can
classify the switch architectures as follows:

Single-stage switches:
If the switches consists of single stage it is known as single-stage switch.
It has a small number of input and output ports.
It has small buffer capacity and are easy to implement.

Multi-stage switches:
If the switches consists of cascaded stages it is known as multi-stage switch.
It has large number of input and output ports.
It has high buffer capacity.
It is expensive.
Space switches:

Space switch architectures are based on a non-blocking switch fabric , such as a crossbar , which
is usually implemented using SOAs (Service-oriented architecture).

Wavelength routing switches:

A wavelength-routing switch is usually based arrayed waveguide grating(AWG) devices which

implement a static permutation from input to output ports.

Broadcast-and-select switches:

It is usually based on a WDM passive star coupler. It is straightforward to implement broadcast or

multicast with this switch.
 Some representative architecture to
illustrate some of the possibilities in OPS
switch design.
SINGLE-STAGE SPACE SWITCH WITH FEED-FORWARD FLDs:
•Each incoming optical signal is first de-multiplexed into W wavelength , each wavelength is
converted to a wavelength that is free at the destination optical output buffer.
•The space switch fabric consist of splitters , optical gates , and combiners.
•The optical signal of each packet is split into N D identical signals , where N is the number of
output ports and D is the number of FDLs per port.
•Once it is determined how long the packet has to be delayed in order to avoid the collision ,
the packet is switched to the desired output port.
Single –stage broadcast-and-select switch with feed-forward FLDs
•The switch has N input and output ports , and it is equipped with D FDLs such that a packet
can be delayed for an integer multiple of slot time T up to DT .
•Each input fiber carries only one wavelength that is different than the wavelengths carried
by the other input fibers; hence total number of wavelengths is N.
 Challenges in OPS
•The lack of an efficient way to store information in the optical domain represents a major
difficulty in the design of OPS nodes.
•Research has focused on ways of emulation electronic RAM capability through the use of fiber
delay lines to delay optical signals.
•FDLs are fibers of fixed length , and can hold a packet for an amount of time determined by the
speed of light and the length of the FDL. Hence , unlike electronic RAM , FDLs cannot store a
packet indefinitely , and , once a packet has entered an FDL , it cannot be retrieved until it
emerges on the other side.
•But FDLs are bulky and expensive and introduce quality degradation to optical signals. Also
include packet loss , cost ,control complexity , packet reordering , and signal loss along the FDL.
 Experimental Efforts
•The KEOPS(KEYS TO OPTICAL PACKET SWITCHING) project funded by the Advanced
Technology and Service(ACTS) program , a research program of the European Union from
1994-1998. The objective was to analyze bit-rate-transparent-all-optical packet switching for
future all-optical networks.

• The WASPNET(wavelength switched packet network) project funded by the U.K Engineering
and Physical Science Research Council. The objective of the project is to understand the
advantages of optical packet over conventional electronic switching.

• The DAVID (data and voice integration over WDM) project, was aimed to propose a packet-
over-WDM network solution.
 ADVANTAGES
• More data is transferred.
•Thinner , cheaper , and lighter than copper cables.
•No electromagnetic interference.
•Inherent security.
•Wiretapping is difficult.
•Data can be transferred over longer distance without regeneration.
 DISADVANTAGES
•Interference with gamma radiation and high voltage electrical field.
• Delicate.
• Development in this field is slow.
• With such small buffers, the packet drop rate of an optical packet
switch is quite high even for moderate loads
 Uses of OPS
•Reduce the number of network layers, to simplify network management software and
remove associated transport overheads
• Offer efficient traffic aggregation and finer service granularity (compared to current
wavelength switching technology), thereby improving OTN utilization.
• Facilitate dynamic QoS-based provisioning through the OTN.
• Provide domain isolation between the service and OTN networks.
 FUTURE SCOPE
Optical packet networks were first studied about ten years ago. Since then many things
have changed, components have been improved, and on the other hand, the nature of
the traffic has changed. Many problems are still unsolved, but optical technology starts
to show signs of maturity.
Optical networks spread from long haul networks to access area, and the networks are
more complex, more efficient and more reliable than earlier. Optical packet switching
will probably remain at laboratory level for many years but optical burst switching has all
opportunities to become a practical technology possible already during next few years.
And, even if optical packet networks will remain in their infancy in the near future, the
improvement of optical circuit switching, optical technology and components will
improve the future possibilities of optical packet switching networks
 CONCLUSION
Optical packet switching was envisioned to be the technology of next generation
optical network. This vision has not been realized yet, but it still promises to be
realized in future.

While optical packet switching offers well established and functional switch
architectures, the problem still are the lack of RAM memories and the expensive
wavelength conversion and regeneration.

OPS should start to be deployed in the operational networks when it becomes

commercially – viable alternative to the electronic hardware.
 REFERENCES
•https://www.researchgate.net › 226497131_Optical_Packet_Switching
•https://www.semanticscholar.org › paper › Chapter-1-OPTICAL-PACKET-S...
•www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu › EE233_Optical_paket_switching
THANK YOU