Compact optical wdm / atm switch with an aggregate 4-tbit / s throughput

We propose a novel scheme for interconnection of multiple high-speed (2.5/10 Gbit/s) asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) streams through an optical wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) network with a total network capacity of up to 4 Tbit/ s. The proposed architecture is based on placing the optical WDM portion of the network in a physically small area, i.e., one central office or in a single rack. This helps to avoid technological obstacles such as power budget, dispersion, and synchronization limitations as well as optical output buffering. The interconnection is an ATM packet switched network and provides optical contention resolution. We show that the implementation of such a network is possible using currently available optoelectronic technology. An optional extension of the network is proposed by a combination of WDM and space division multiplexing (SDM) technology. Simulation results are presented, indicating network throughput of up to 100%.