Modular Architectures of Optical Multi-Stage Switching Networks

Requirements on switching and interconnection fabrics inside switching equipment, high-performance computers and datacenters of the future are getting more and more demanding in terms of throughput and power saving. Optical technology provides many opportunities of improvement of both features compared to electronic counterparts. This work defines a procedure to design the architecture of optical multistage switching networks. Our proposal is the result of a systematic study of the properties of multistage networks, on one side, and of optical switching systems on the other side. Modularity of the implementation is the primary concern, allowing for the construction of a generic-size fabric by the simple cascading of multiple stage-modules. In this paper we show in details the application of the approach to a family of banyan networks, though the method can be extended to other types of networks. The designed architecture can be exploited for various implementation technologies, as, for instance, integrated optics with microring resonators, free-space optics with 2-D MEMS, networks on chip.