Demonstration of 40-Gb/s Packet Routing Using All-Optical Header Processing

We show simultaneous forwarding of two optical packets through a 2times2 spatial switch at 40 Gb/s using only two ultrafast nonlinear interferometers. This demonstrates a scalable all-optical header processing architecture applicable for general network topologies and can lead to reduced size, weight, and power requirements as compared with electronic solutions. Clear open eye diagrams were observed and a packet error rate of 10-6, comparable with current electronic router error rates, was measured for the entire system