Patent ID: 8041214

Claim:
A photonic network packet routing method comprising the steps of: optically encoding destination address information attached to an optical IP packet into an optical code using light attributes; propagating the optical IP packet to a routing node; receiving the optical IP packet at the node; discriminating the optical IP packet by estimating peak values of optical time correlations of the encoded destination address information attached to the received optical IP packet with encoded addresses; switching to an output path for the optical IP packet based on a result of the discriminating step; and outputting the optical IP packet labeled with prescribed address information on the output path selected by the switching step, wherein the optical encoding of the destination address information attached to the optical IP packet comprises the steps of: dividing an optical pulse output by a pulse source into N number of chip pulses (N≧2) having a prescribed delay time therebetween; and changing intensity of the individual chip pulses according to the coding method, and recombining the divided optical chip pulses.