Abstract

Given the extremely high channel bandwidth of photonic switching networks, the performance in terms of throughput and delay is greatly affected by the bandwidth and architecture of the control system. A parallel optical pipelined architecture can perform the complex crosspoint control of specific switch structures while maintaining the high throughput and bandwidth of pipelined processing. It is shown that the overall switch throughput and delay under centralized processing and control at very high data rates approaches that of distributed control, limited only by the propagation delay of the switch and the bandwidth of the processor. The performance of an integrated-optic tree switch controller is discussed and evaluated in terms of optical implementation and system optical efficiency.

© 1989 Optical Society of America