Abstract:
A photonic label switching architecture. The architecture includes a photonic label extractor to split an externally input first optical packet data into a photonic label and a payload. Then, the photonic label is input to a photonic label processing and swapping device to duplicate as a plurality of parallel copies for decoding and producing an auto-correlation output. According to the auto-correlation output, a photonic label swapping path is chosen, a new photonic label is produced, and an output port of an optical switch is chosen. A new optical packet data which is the result of the new photonic label adjoining the payload is output to the chosen output port of the optical switch.

Description:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION  
         [0001]    1. Field of the Invention  
           [0002]    The invention relates to a photonic label switching architecture, using an optical code correlation technique to replace photonic labels in the optical packet and handle the fully photonic label switching through the features of auto-correlation and cross-correlation, thereby omitting the photoelectric conversion for a photonic label.  
           [0003]    2. Description of Related Art  
           [0004]    The demand for enormous transmission capacity through optical fiber has been met so far by the wide scale deployment of wavelength division multiplexing (WDM). A direct mapping of Internet protocol (IP) onto the optical layer will eventually simplify the protocol architecture, to minimize the transfer delay in the core network. Further, to manage and access this bandwidth, the next growing challenge will most likely emerge at the switching nodes. The eventual goal is to reduce the amount of complex electronic components, and the cost, by migrating to the all-optical network, where data is switched and routed transparently in optical form. An optical packet switched network can provide high performance and fast switching with fine granularity for future networks. Photonic packet header processing for routing and switching will be needed to increase throughput and reduce latency. However, the processing capability of electronic routers will eventually result in bottlenecks in the foreseeable future, due to the explosion of IP traffic. Accordingly, one promising way to alleviate the capacity limit of the routers is to introduce a Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) technology.  
           [0005]    [0005]FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a typical MPLS network. In FIG. 1, the network is formed by label switching router (LSR), e.g. LSR 1 -LSR 5  where LSR 1  is an ingress LSR and LSR 5  is an egress LSR. As shown in FIG. 1, the solid line indicates a path between LSRs and its routing protocol and label distribution protocol, and the dotted line indicates label switching traffic flow. The principle function of MPLS is to utilize a label swapping forwarding algorithm to achieve the high-speed packet forwarding capability. It provides a label-steam which means mapping IP address to simple, fixed-length labels used by different packet forwarding and packet-switching technologies. Header processing and forwarding of IP packets are necessary at every router. This label can be used to save significant processing time by avoiding network layer label analysis at each hop and soaring processing demands at each network node. Moreover, the high-speed switching of data is possible because the fixed-length label is inserted at the beginning of the packet and can be processed by hardware through LSR 1  and LSR 53 . Thus, switching packets can be very quick between links. MPLS routers use this kind of simple label-swapping algorithm replacing the standard destination-based hop-by-hop forwarding paradigm to quickly forward packets and enable scaling to terabit rates easily. Therefore, MPLS network can be well suited to the photonic-based network in which high-speed transmission is required. Here, it is referred to as photonic MPLS. A recent photonic MPLS is mainly devoted to wavelength MPLS network where the WDM technology is applied. When the logical topology of the wavelength MPLS network is established, the label switching paths (wavelength paths or light paths) are configured over the WDM physical network in order to carry IP packets utilizing the wavelength path. Here, the physical network describes an actual network which is similar to the network showed in FIG. 1. But the nodes are optical nodes and links connecting nodes are optical links. The LSRs in FIG. 1 are generally able to perform various operations on packet labels. However, it has been difficult to realize those functions in optical domain, i.e. for example, the wavelength MPLS network. Only one exception is label swapping changing the incoming wavelength to the different wavelength at the optical cross-connect switch. However, a high-speed wavelength conversion is difficult to perform on a packet-by-packet basis by the current technology. Therefore, functionalities of the core LSR are very limited in the wavelength MPLS network. To solve this problem, the light paths have to be set up in a circuit-switched fashion between ingress/egress LSRs. However, the bandwidth utilization of light paths will thus become very inefficient due to the photoelectric conversion delay. Additionally, the packet switching speed is limited by the photoelectric conversion, because the photonic header of a packet switching configured by the WDM technology has to be processed in electrical domain.  
         SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION  
         [0006]    Accordingly, an object of the invention is to provide a photonic label switching architecture, using an optical code division multiplexing (OCDM) to configure photonic label switching so as to process the photonic label in all optical domain without the photoelectric conversion. Thus, the processing capability and speed of photonic label is increased.  
           [0007]    Another object of the invention is to provide a photonic label switching architecture, which configures photonic header based on OCDM technology. By this way, roouting and switching can be implemented in photonic form, thereby increasing the throughput and reducing the latency.  
           [0008]    The invention provides a photonic label switching architecture. The architecture includes a photonic label generator in an ingress LSR and a photonic label extractor, a photonic label processor, optical swappers, optical switches and an optical coupler in a core LSR. The photonic label generator includes an optical polarization controller and optical encoders. The optical polarization controller polarizes the lights of photonic label and payload in an optical packet to orthogonal TE and TM modes. The optical encoders receive the TE mode&#39;s light and encode the light to be a desired photonic label. In the core LSR, the photonic label extractor splits the received optical packet into photonic label and optical payload. The photonic label is directed to the photonic label processor. The photonic label processor includes an optical splitter and an optical correlator having a plurality of optical decoders and a plurality of optical time gate controllers with respect to the optical decoders. The optical splitter duplicates the photonic label as a plurality of parallel copies. The optical decoders match the copies such that only one with an auto-correlation label can pass through the respective optical time gate controller to the photonic label swapper. The photonic label swapper thus produces a new photonic label and configures the respective optical switch to select an output path. The optical coupler re-combines the new photonic label and the optical payload passed through the optical switch as a new optical packet. The new optical packet is output to the selected output path. Therefore, photoelectric conversion in every core LSR is omitted and the processing limitation for the photonic label processing on electrical domain disappears. 
       
    
    
     BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS  
       [0009]    [0009]FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a typical MPLS network;  
         [0010]    [0010]FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of an MPLS network configured by OCDM technology according to the invention;  
         [0011]    [0011]FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram of a photonic label switching router (PLSR) of FIG. 2 according to the invention;  
         [0012]    [0012]FIG. 4 is a schematic diagram of another PLSR according to the invention;  
         [0013]    [0013]FIG. 5 is a schematic diagram of a photonic label switching architecture according to the invention;  
         [0014]    [0014]FIG. 6 is a schematic diagram of an auto-correlation optical signal processing and photonic label swapping according to the invention; and  
         [0015]    [0015]FIG. 7 is schematic diagram of an optical encoder example according to the invention. 
     
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION  
       [0016]    The following numbers denote the same elements throughout the description and drawings.  
         [0017]    [0017]FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of an MPLS network configured by OCDM technology (OC-MPLS network) according to the invention. In FIG. 2, in the OC-MPLS network, electronic LSRs in FIG. 1 are totally replaced with photonic IP routers (referred to as PLSRs) PLSR 1 -PLSR 5  in the core network. Accordingly, the label switching applying in the OC-MPLS network in the packet forwarding algorithm is referred to as the OC-label switching. As shown in FIG. 2, when the WDM signals on a fiber are input to an ingress PLSR 1  of the OC-MPLS network, the PLSR 1  demultiplexes the input WDM signals and produces optical packets such as OC 3 , OC 5  and OC 6 . All the packets on the same wavelength are forwarded to a core PLSR to be processed and then directed to an egress PLSR 5 . The PLSR 5  multiplexes all packets and outputs the multiplexed packets through a connected fiber. The processing of IP packets in the PLSR is mainly performed in optical domain without photon-to-electron conversion. Therefore, an all-optical processing is achieved.  
         [0018]    [0018]FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram of an ingress PLSR (PLSR 1 ) of FIG. 2 according to the invention. In FIG. 3, the PLSR 1  structure includes a laser light source  30 , for example a DFB laser, which can provide a continuous wave (CW) and precise wavelength and is suitable for long-haul transmission. The device PLSR 1  also includes an optical splitter  31 , optical polarization controllers  32 ,  33 , an optical delay device  37 , optical modulators  34 ,  38 , an optical encoder  36  and an optical coupler  39 . As shown in FIG. 3, a laser light emitted by the light source  30  is equally separated by the splitter  31  into two light beams. The controller  32  polarizes one of the two light beams as a polarized signal TE and the controller  33  polarizes the other as a polarized signal TM. The signals TE and TM are orthogonal. The modulator  34  modulates the signal TE to produce an ultra-short optical pulse stream for the optical encoder  36  to accordingly encode the stream as an optical code label OC-L. The signal TM is delayed by the device  37  (for example, a fiber delay line) an appropriate period of time and output to the modulator  38 , which can modulate the signal TM and an external electrical packet EPK to be part of the payload PL of an optical packet. Therefore, the optical coupler  39  can attach the label OC-L in front of the optical payload PL as the desired optical packet. The desired optical packet is output to next PLSR such as PLSR 2  through fiber channel (port) A.  
         [0019]    [0019]FIG. 4 is a schematic diagram of another PLSR structure representing any one PLSR except for the ingress PLSR PLSR 1  (that is, either the core PLSR PLSR 2 -PLSR 4  or the egress PLSR PLSR 5 ) according to the invention. In FIG. 4, this PLSR structure includes a photonic label extractor  40 , a tunable delay device  41 , a photonic label processing and swapping device  42  and an optical switch  43 . As shown in FIG. 4, when transferring packet data OPK through a port like port A shown in FIG. 3, it is possible to concurrently receive two optical labeled packets data 1  and data 2  or even more in the port transferred. The photonic label extractor respectively extracts optical labels  412 ,  414  and optical payloads  411 ,  413  from the input optical packets data 1 , data 2 . The payloads  411 ,  413  are further delayed for a period of time (about 5 ps) by the device  41  that can be a fiber delay line. Then, the delayed payload is input to the switch  43 . Inside the photonic MPLS network, A PLSR performs routing function through an internal routing table. The internal routing table is stored in the device  42  of every PLSR (not shown) except for PLSR 1 . According to the label  412 ,  414  extracted by the extractor  40 , the routing function can compute new labels  415 ,  416  with reference to the internal routing table and determine fiber output ports C, D by controlling the switch  43 . The routing tables (at egress and core routers) are generated by converting IP addresses into smaller pairs of labels and wavelengths and distributing them across the network much in the same way that MPLS is used in today&#39;s IP networks. The extractor  40  can be an optical polarization splitter to extract photonic labels from input packets in which each includes a TE mode for photonic label and a TM mode for optical payload in orthogonal. The optical polarization splitter can use a low-loss polymer waveguide, a briefringent polyimide waveguide or the like (FIG. 5) to control the splitter ratio of the TE mode and the TM mode with very low crosstalk. The device  42  in the PLSR also includes a forwarding function. The forwarding function involves swapping the original label with the new label. That is physically converting the original optical code (i.e.  412 ,  414 ) to the new optical code (i.e.  415 ,  416 ). Other switching or buffering mechanisms are also configured in the forwarding process. Then, the new labels  415 ,  416  combine the payload  411  and  413  passed through the switch  43  as new optical packets. The new optical packets are output through the determined fiber output ports C, D. The photonic label processing is described in detail in the following.  
         [0020]    [0020]FIG. 5 is a schematic diagram of a parallel photonic label processing architecture according to the invention. In FIG. 5, the architecture is the device  42  in FIG. 4, including an optical amplifier  421 , an optical splitter  422 , a plurality of optical decoders label#1-label#N, a plurality of optical time gate controllers  423 , a plurality of optical swappers  424 , a plurality of optical-to-electrical converters  425 , a plurality of low-pass filters  426  and a plurality of electrical amplifiers  427 , wherein a correlator includes an optical decoder, optical time gate controller, optical swapper, optical-to-electrical converter and electrical amplifier connected in series. As shown in FIG. 5, the label OC-L is extracted by a low-loss polymer waveguide or briefringent polyimide waveguide, amplified by the amplifier  421 , duplicated by the splitter  422  to produce many parallel copies, concurrently performed optical correlation comparison and photonic label processing in time domain by corresponding passive optical decoder label#1-label#N through channels CH1-CHN to produce an auto-correlation optical signal output and a plurality of cross-correlation optical signal outputs. Next, only the auto-correlation optical signal (i.e. the photonic label with orthogonal TE mode) output can pass through the controller  423  and filter out its ripples to obtain the unique mainlobe as an optical clock signal OC-Lclock to open the respective controller  4231  and input the OC-Lmain to optical swapper  424  and produce a new optical code label (further described in FIG. 6). The new optical code label (mainlobe) is converted by the following optical-to-electrical converter  425  into an electrical signal, filtered by the low-pass filter  426 , amplified by the electrical amplifier  427  and then input to the optical switch  43  to control its path for combination with the payload PL delayed by the delay device  41  by 5 ps. Thus, a packet with a new optical code label (FIG. 4) is produced and output through the following fiber channel (output port) P1, P2, . . . , or PN to next PLSR. Also, the cross-correlation optical signal outputs have only produced ripples (or harmonics), which will filter out by the following filter  426  and no signal is output by the switch  43 . The auto-correlation optical signal processing is described with reference to the controller  423  and the switch  424  in the next section.  
         [0021]    [0021]FIG. 6 is a flowchart of auto-correlation optical signal processing according to the invention. As shown in FIG. 6, the auto-correlation optical signal OC-Lauto is output through the following optical time gate controller  423 , optical amplifier  61  and optical swapper  424 . The signal OC-Lauto can be an interpolating function basically represented by sinc (x). The controller  423  can adopt a semiconductor optical device, for example a mode-locked laser diode (MLLD), which is an ultra-fast (10 GHz) optical ultra-short (about 2 ps) pulse generator with low timing jitter (less than 0.5 ps). Inside the controller  423 , optical gating is due to absorption saturation and the following picosecond absorption recovery in a saturable absorber in the MLLD structure incorporating optical gate-pulse amplification (not shown). Accordingly, it further includes a gate controller  4231 , a clock extractor  4232  and an optical circulator  4233 . As shown in FIG. 6, the signal OC-Lauto is sent to the controller  4231  and the extractor  4232 . In the extractor  4232 , the signal OC-Lauto is coupled with  10 GHz monolithic MLLD (i.e. the extractor  4232 ) in order to obtain synchronized optical clock signal OC-Lclock. The extracted signal OC-Lclock is injected to the circulator  4233  while the signal OC-Lauto is injected to the circulator  4233  through the controller  4231 . As such, only an optical data pulse which adequately overlaps with the extracted signal can transmit through the circulator  4233 . It means that the signal OC-Lauto can pass through the circulator  4233  only when it has the same timing as the extracted signal OC-Lclock. After the passage of the extracted signal, the controller  423  is recovered to a high absorption state. Also, after the passage of the extracted signal, mainlobe signal OC-Lmain is obtained and amplified by the amplifier  61 . The amplified signal is transmitted into the swapper  424  to, as shown in FIG. 4, produce the new photonic label to couple with the original payload as the new optical packet to be output by the switch  43 . The swapper can be an optical encoder. Next, an encode example is given.  
         [0022]    [0022]FIG. 7 is a schematic diagram of an optical encoder example according to the invention. Due to the same structure of decode and encode except that the impulse response (data processing flow) is reversed in the time domain, only the encoder example is given for simplication and explanation. In FIG. 7, the encoder includes an optical amplifier  71 , a plurality of optical fiber delay devices d1-dm and a plurality of phase modulators  72 . As shown in FIG. 7, an output of the device  34  in FIG. 3 or the OC-Lmain in FIG. 6 is physically an ultra-short pulse about 2 ps duty duration. The pulse is amplified by an optional amplifier  71 , duplicated by an optical splitter  75  (similar to the device  422  in FIG. 5) into multiple copies, passed corresponding delay devices d1-dm to produce different delay time (a circle indicating a chip duration by 5 ps in this example) and modulated by the modulator  72  to produce modulated pulses with a phase shift of π. The modulated pulses are coupled by an optical coupler  72  into the output of the encoder with a stream of optical impulse, for example 0ππ000ππ, to present a new optical code label. Because the new label generally has an ultra-short time duration and is not necessary for photoelectric conversion, the packet processing rate can be raised. The OC-L of FIG. 3 and the devices  415  and  416  of FIG.  4  is similar. In the new label, 0 indicates no shift and π indicates a phase shift of π.  
         [0023]    Although the present invention has been described in its preferred embodiments, it is not intended to limit the invention to the precise embodiments disclosed herein. Those who are skilled in this technology can still make various alterations and modifications without departing from the scope and spirit of this invention. Therefore, the scope of the present invention shall be defined and protected by the following claims and their equivalents.