Capacity Scaling in a Multihost Wavelength-Striped SOA-Based Switch Fabric

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Abstract
The scaling of the capacity of a semiconductor- optical-amplifier-based switch carrying wavelength-striped data is assessed under packet timescale reconfiguration for short- reach high-capacity data interconnects. Off-the-shelf components are used with a low-complexity control layer to demonstrate high-capacity end-to-end packet routing. The impact of increasing the aggregate data rate and the number of connections made to the switch fabric is assessed in terms of the power penalty and dynamic range for a broadcast and select architecture. Studies with up to ten wavelength-multiplexed data channels with an aggregate capacity of 100 Gb/s are shown to give sufficient margin for even higher aggregate data rates and for the additional splitter stages, which would enable 8times8 connectivity in a single stage. Further increases in connectivity are anticipated with higher performance commercially available transmitters and receivers. Multipath routing is assessed with three hosts simultaneously transmitting wavelength-striped data packets over the same switch fabric to reveal a penalty in the range of 0.3-0.6 dB due to multi- path crosstalk and a modest penalty in the range of 0.4-1.2 dB that was incurred through dynamic routing. A route to terabit-per- second switch performance in a single-stage low-complexity switch fabric is identified.