Hybrid Optical Switching for Data Center Networks

Current data centers networks rely on electronic switching and point-to-point interconnects.When considering future data center requirements, these solutions will raise issues in terms of flexibility, scalability, performance, and energy consumption. For this reason several optical switched interconnects, which make use of optical switches and wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), have been recently proposed. However, the solutions proposed so far suffer from low flexibility and are not able to provide service differentiation. In this paper we introduce a novel data center network based on hybrid optical switching (HOS). HOS combines optical circuit, burst, and packet switching on the same network. In this way different data center applications can be mapped to the optical transportmechanism that best suits their traffic characteristics. Furthermore, the proposed HOS network achieves high transmission efficiency and reduced energy consumption by using two parallel optical switches. We consider the architectures of both a traditional data center network and the proposed HOS network and present a combined analytical and simulation approach for their performance and energy consumption evaluation. We demonstrate that the proposed HOS data center network achieves high performance and flexibility while considerably reducing the energy consumption of current solutions

Hybrid Optoelectronic Router for Future Optical Packet‐ Switched Networks

With the growing demand for bandwidth and the need to support new services, several challenges are awaiting future photonic networks. In particular, the performance of current network nodes dominated by electrical routers/switches is seen as a bottleneck that is accentuated by the pressing demand for reducing the network power consumption. With the concept of performing more node functions with optics/optoelectronics, optical packet switching (OPS) provides a promising solution. We have developed a hybrid optoelectronic router (HOPR) prototype that exhibits low power consumption and low latency together with high functionality. The router is enabled by key optical/optoelectronic devices and subsystem technologies that are combined with CMOS electronics in a novel architecture to leverage the strengths of both optics/optoelectronics and electronics. In this chapter, we review our recent HOPR prototype developed for realizing a new photonic intra data center (DC) network. After briefly explaining about the HOPR‐based DC network, we highlight the underlying technologies of the new prototype that enables label processing, switching, and buffering of asynchronous arbitrary‐length 100‐Gbps (25‐Gbps × 4λs) burst‐mode optical packets with enhanced power efficiency and reduced latency

Interconnection network architectures based on integrated orbital angular momentum emitters

Novel architectures for two-layer interconnection networks based on concentric OAM emitters are presented. A scalability analysis is done in terms of devices characteristics, power budget and optical signal to noise ratio by exploiting experimentally measured parameters. The analysis shows that by exploiting optical amplifications, the proposed interconnection networks can support a number of ports higher than 100. The OAM crosstalk induced-penalty, evaluated through an experimental characterization, do not significantly affect the interconnection network performance