Abstract

Communication between large numbers of I/O ports will require switching of Terabit aggregate bandwidth to meet the needs of future applications. Advances in fiber amplifiers have increased interest in transparent optical networks which do not rely on data regeneration in the electronic domain. Additionally, since polarization compensation in a single mode fiber [1] allows automatic and stable control of the polarization states of transmitted optical signals, it may enable utilization of polarization dependent all-optical switches. Polarization switching has been proposed for ‘free-space’ multistage interconnection networks (MIN) for switching and multiprocessor interconnections [2-5]. In this paper we present a ‘folded’ optical MIN system that permits switching high-speed signals between multiple input and output nodes. Optical routing is performed by bypass-exchange switches built of birefringent computer generated holograms (BCGH) combined with electrically addressed ferroelectric liquid crystal (FLC) device. This scaleable system can switch high bandwidth communication lines or permit memory access and multiprocessor interconnections. In the following we discuss the system design, network protocol, and performance of our optical MIN.

© 1997 Optical Society of America