DESIGN OF AN ARRAYED WAVEGUIDE GRATINGS BASED OPTICAL PACKET SWITCH

Optical packet switching is considered as the future of data transfer technology in combination with middle-aged electronics. The biggest challenge encountered in optical packet switching is the lack of optical buffers for storing the contending packets. Therefore, for the contention resolution of packets, a temporary storage in terms of fiber delay lines is used. This task is accomplished by an optical packet switch. In this paper, a design modification in the AWGR (Arrayed Waveguide Grating Router) is presented for improving the switch performance. The power budget analysis of the switch is also presented to estimate the sufficient power level of the switch. The obtained results clearly reveal that the architecture presented in this paper can be operated in micro-watts in comparison to the earlier optical switch which operates in milli watts regime. Finally, simulation results are presented to obtain packet loss probability and average delay. Even at the higher load of 0.6, the switch presented in this paper provides a very low loss probability (10(-6)) and delay remain within 2 slots.