Patent ID: 7310479

Claim:
A multi-wavelength optical packet switch system with shared output buffer, comprising: N input fibers and N output fibers, each fiber being able to transmit an M-wavelength optical signal, which has M wavelengths, where N, M are positive integers; an input device consisting of N optical demultiplexers and connected to the N input fibers to separate the M-wavelength optical signal in each input fiber into M input optical signals corresponding to the M wavelengths; a wavelength converter, connected to the input device to tune wavelengths of the input optical signals, wherein the wavelength converter consists of N×M tunable wavelength converters, (I−1×M)-th to (I×M−1)-th tunable wavelength converters connected respectively to M output terminals of an I-th optical demultiplexer, where N, M, I are positive integers; a wavelength router, connected to the wavelength converter to switch packets of each optical signal outputted by the wavelength converter; an output buffer, connected to the wavelength router to provide output optical packets of the wavelength router with timer delay from 0 to L packet frames; a wavelength classifier, connected to the output buffer to tune wavelengths for the output optical packets to wavelengths of the corresponding output fibers; and a control device, connected to the wavelength converter to read packet headers of the input optical signals to accordingly analyze output fiber fields of all packet headers, thus obtaining corresponding output fibers and output conflicts for adjusting the wavelength converter and subsequently completing packet switching performed by the wavelength router; wherein the control device is based on the following equation to set converted wavelengths of the tunable wavelength converters of the first wavelength converter: W ijkl =( NM−iM−j+k ( L+ 1)+ l )mod( NM ), where N is a fiber number, M is a transmittable wavelength number in one fiber, L is a maximum number of packet frames for time delay, i is a serial number of a respective input fiber for input packets, j is a serial number of a respective input wavelength for input packets, k is a number of packet frames required by the input packets for time delay, 1 is a serial number of a respective output fiber for output packets, and W ijkl is a serial number of a converted wavelength of the (i,j)-th tunable wavelength converter.