Design and Channel Constraint Analysis of Ultrafast Multihop All-Optical Networks with Deflection Routing Employing Solitons

Regular two-connected multihop transparent optical networks using ultrahigh bit-rate single-wavelength on/off keying are addressed. A novel solution for packet and node architecture is introduced to take full advantage of the recently demonstrated optical samplers and of the electronic processing capability. Channel transmission error arguments show how the size of these nonregenerative networks employing deflection routing is limited for a given optical bit rate. These limits are quantified for the Manhattan Street Network and ShuffleNet employing solitons. An upper bound on network performance in terms of maximum achievable bit rate and throughput for a given packet error rate is evaluated by taking into account the soliton self-frequency shift due to Raman scattering, the jitter due to amplified spontaneous emission noise, the short-range interaction, and their interplay. Results show that if the packet error rate is to be bounded below 106, the node-to-node fiber span cannot exceed a few kilometers for network sizes greater than 64 nodes when the optical bit rate is as high as 100 Gb/s.