Dynamically reconfigurable alloptical correlators to support ultrafast internet routing,.pdfVIP

Dynamically Reconfigurable All-Optical Correlators to Support Ultra-fast Internet Routing + + + M. C. Hauer, J. McGeehan, J. Touch*, P. Kamath*, J. Bannister*, E.R. Lyons , C. H. Lin , A. A. Au , H.P. Lee+, D. S. Starodubov**, and A. E. Willner Dept. of Electrical Engineering-Systems, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-2565 (213) 740-1488, Fax (213) 740-8729, hauer@usc.edu *USC Information Sciences Institute, 4676Admiralty Way, Marina del Rey, CA 90292-6695 +Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, UC Irvine, 2231 Engineering Gateway, Irvine, CA 92697 **Sabeus Photonics, 3995 Via Oro Avenue, Long Beach, CA 90810 Abstract: A new all-optical networking function is demonstrated using a bank of novel thermally- tuned FBG-based optical correlators to construct an “optical bypass” to vastly accelerate conventional electronic internet routers. Based on a simple set of rules, a software algorithm configures the correlators as a routing table cache that can quickly determine the destination port for a large percentage of the incoming traffic by only examining a small subset of the address bits. 2001 Optical Society of America OCIS codes: (060.2330) Fiber optics communications; (060.4250) Networks Introduction As transmission speeds in the network core approach 40Gb/s and beyond, the need to make faster routing decisions at each networking node becomes increasingly evident. It is therefore important for optical designers to examine h