Performances of two contention resolution units in optical SOA-MZI router

. We propose an optical router architecture with contention resolution unit. This router operates with asynchronous and variable length packets. FIFO technique is chosen for packet priority. The proposed router is implemented with SOA-MZI gates. The contention resolution unit is tested with two separate strategies, namely the deflection routing and the wavelength conversion. Error-free transmission up to 100 Gbps is guaranteed for both strategies with a penalty around 1 dB for wavelength conversion.