NTT Research and Development 2010 Review of Activities

Overview

With the explosive growth of the Internet and related services, network traffic has been increasing rapidly. This growth has resulted in an exponential increase of the power consumed by routers, thus creating an urgent need to develop a carrier-class router which dramatically reduces power while increasing capacity. To realize these extreme requirements, we have developed a hybrid optoelectronic packet-switched router which optimally utilizes both optical and electrical technologies, with the key enablers being novel optical and optoelectronic device technologies developed within our laboratories.

Features

• Novel router architecture employing a shared buffer
• Reduces power and latency by minimizing electronic processing
• Novel optical packet processing for high-speed asynchronous burst packets
  • High-speed optical label processor which keeps the payload in the optical domain
  • Highly functional shared buffer with optical and optoelectronic interfaces to a CMOS^*1 memory
  • Wavelength-routing optical switch using wavelength-tunable lasers
• High-speed, low-power optical/optoelectronic device technologies invented and developed in our laboratories

Application scenarios

• Future large-capacity metro network using optical packet switching systems
• Storage area network and cloud computing network requiring low latency

• *1 CMOS: Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor
• *2 AWG: Arrayed Waveguide Grating
• *3 QoS: Quality of Service
• *4 TTL: Time To Live
• *5 3R: Reshaping, Retiming, Regenerating
• *6 TWC: Tunable Wavelength Converter
• *7 FWC: Fixed Wavelength Converter
• *8 APD-TIA: Avalanche PhotoDiode with Trans-Impedance Amplifier
• *9 LN: Lithium Niobate modulator
• *10 EA-DFB: Electro-Absorption modulator integrated Distributed FeedBack laser

• This work is partially supported by the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT).