Bit-level packet-switching all-optical multihop shuffle networks with deflection routing

We propose an all-optical packet-switching scheme in multihop shuffle networks in which deflection routing is used as its contention-resolution principle. In our scheme only partial address information in the packet header is read before a routing decision is made. Because the new scheme does not involve a time-consuming look-up table, extremely low latency operation is possible at each node. Moreover, because the number of demultiplexers at each node can be kept constant even though the network size changes, cost-effective design of a node is possible.