Abstract

Despite significant advances in optical information transfer, routing decisions in optical networks are still made by electronic devices.¹ The matching of an optical "header" to a local address, a key requirement in packet switching, is presently performed by converting the optical header to an electronic data stream and then carrying out the comparison. This operation at every node on the network is now recognized as a communications bottleneck, ultimately limiting network performance. To circumvent this problem, a simple optoelectronic architecture has been implemented at high speeds to perform an optical data comparison in a manner which avoids the electronic bottleneck. Demonstrated at a data rate of 200 Mbits/sec, surpassing current FDDI standards, this architecture is a promising method for optical header reading in a packet switching network.

© 1994 IEEE