Architectures and buffering for all-optical packet-switched cross-connects

This paper considers the performance of an all-optical packet-switched cross-connect. All-optical header processing and all-optical routing are implemented in the cross-connect architectures. The main metric considered to measure the performance is the packet loss ratio for the buffering. This is influenced primarily by three factors. The first is the cross-connect architecture: feedback or feed-forward buffering, incorporating wavelength domain contention resolution. The second is the selection of the fibre delay line distribution: degenerate or non-degenerate distributions. And the third is the traffic load together with the traffic model used for the performance analysis: a Poisson distribution or a self-similar model. It is shown that the optimal implementation of a feedback buffer requires a technique such as overflow buffering as well as the superior performance of an all-optical switch in order to maintain signal quality through multiple recirculations.