Optical header recognition by spectroholographic filtering

We report on a novel scheme based on spectral holography for high-speed processing of optical header information. In this scheme, we rapidly analyze each incoming header by performing simultaneous correlation operations with a large number of headers stored in advance through angular multiplexing. Decoding is accomplished by identification of the directions that yield the maximum correlation signal. In a proof-of-concept experiment, two 5-byte ASCII addresses were decoded successfully without any ambiguity. The potential of this technique for high-speed packet switching is discussed.