Novel optical packet switching scheme using OFDM label with one core router and two edge routers

In this paper, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a novel optical packet switching scheme with one core router and two edge routers, in which an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signal is generated as a label. In this experiment there are two transmission spans, each span consists of 50-km SMF-28 and an erbium-doped optical fiber amplifier (EDFA) without dispersion management. A 10 Gb/s on-off keying (OOK) optical payload and a 2.5 Gb/s OFDM optical label are generated, encapsulated, and transmitted in the first span. And then old label is replaced by new label, the generated new optical packet after transmission over the second span is detached and detected. The transmission performance of the optical label and payload is experimentally investigated at the ingress router, core router and egress router.