Abstract

Intelligent society demands diverse communication services such as the telephone, facsimile and the high definition TV. To improve flexibility and efficiency of the transmission system under these diverse demands, Asynchronous Transfer Mode will be installed as a new standard method. In this mode, information is divided into many cells of a constant bit-length with headers. Each cell chooses its own route by itself, depending on address information in its header. To realize ATM network for massive demands in future, optical communication technology will be applied. For this, an all-optical self-routing switch, which changes signal route by address information on optical signal itself, is strongly required. Figure 1 shows our approach to realize this switch. That is a Mach-Zehnder interferometer with nonlinear optical medium inserted into one arm. An address light, whose wavelength is slightly different from that of a signal light, controls the phase status of the interferometer through the refractive nonlinearity. Therefore, it also controls which output-port a signal cell passes through.

© 1995 Optical Society of America