Abstract

Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser arrays (VCSELs) are low cost components and attractive devices for association with free space interconnects. The opto-clectronics characteristics of GaAs VCSELs are already interesting for local-area networks implementation. For long-haul telecommunications applications, first results on InP based VCSELs are encouraging. Thus, in order to evaluate the advantages and drawbacks of the use of VCSELs in an optical fibres switch, we have developed a self-routing crossbar architecture. $\left(\sqrt{\text{N}}\times \sqrt{\text{N}}->\sqrt{\text{N}}\times \sqrt{\text{N}}\right)$ single mode optical fiber) [1]. Our study is divided in three parts: i) optical interconnects; ii) a photo-addressed switch node; iii) an header decoder.

© 1996 IEEE