Self-routing photonic switching with optically processed control

As transmission rates in fiber-optic networks increase, routing optical signals using electronic processing will become increasingly difficult. This limitation can be overcome by performing the required processing optically. Self-routing of optical signals through a switching node using optically processed control is demonstrated. Packet headers are encoded with packet destination addresses using either optical code-division or time-division encoding schemes. An optical routing controller reads the destination addresses and appropriately sets the photonic switch using an optical look-up table. The results of several experiments demonstrating optical control of a photonic switch are described.