THESEUS - a terabit hybrid electronics-optical self-routing architecture for large ATM switches

Abstract

THESEUS (Terabit Hybrid Opto-Electronics Self-routing Ultrafast Switch) is proposed as a switching architecture that combines and merges electronics with optical technology. It is a self-routing wavelength-division/microwave subcarriers multiplexed ATM switch for lightwave networks. It has potential to be extended to a 1000×1000 system without internal blocking. Among the advantages of the hybrid implementation are flexibility in service upgrade, relaxed tolerances on optical filtering, potentially low-cost components and protocol simplification. For a smaller system, subcarrier multiplexing can be used to solve destination contention. The calculation shows that the group assignment is better in terms of throughput and packet delay.