Space-wavelength trade-off in the design of nonblocking directional-coupler-based networks under crosstalk constraint

• Published in: 1998 IEEE International Conference on Communications Vol. 3; pp. 1526 - 1530 vol.3
• Main Authors: Mehdi Vaez, M., Chin-Tau Lea
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 1998
• Subjects: Coupling circuits; Directional couplers; Intelligent networks; Optical coupling; Optical crosstalk; Optical sensors; Optical waveguides; Semiconductor optical amplifiers; Stimulated emission; Switching systems
• ISBN: 0780347889; 9780780347885
• DOI: 10.1109/ICC.1998.683079

Directional couplers are electro-optical switching devices that are capable of switching multiple wavelength signals. Once the state of a coupler is set up, optical signals can pass through the coupler with a rate of tera bits per second. A directional coupler-based photonic switching system however, suffers from the intrinsic crosstalk problem. This shortcoming has been the most limiting factor in building a large switching network of this kind. It has been shown that by using more hardware (couplers) we can reduce the number of crosstalk-generating couplers along the path of a connection in a Banyan-type switching system. We explore the wavelength approach to achieve this task. We show that if there are two wavelengths available, the number of couplers suffering the first-order crosstalk can be reduced to zero while the total number of couplers will remain the same as a network without any crosstalk constraint.