Demonstration of bufferless optical packet switch with recursive stages of parametric wavelength converter

We demonstrate in an experiment an optical packet switching (OPS) using recursive parametric wavelength converters (PWCs) which uses the combination of two or more PWCs for wavelength conversions. The PWCs, which are based on four-wave mixing in highly nonlinear fibers, are possible for multiple wavelength conversion, allowing a share-per-node switching scheme, and thus significantly reducing the number of wavelength converters. Detailed demonstration of a developed OPS prototype using the joint of two PWCs indicates the generation of various wavelength conversion patterns which play an important role for OPS performance. The converted signals after two stages of PWC are obtained with error-free operations and low power penalties (BER=10−9) of about 2.0 dB. Numerical results also show significant improvement in packet blocking probability by the proposed recursive PWC-based OPS in comparison with the previous non-recursive schemes.