Abstract

A photonic packet switch having all-optical routing functionality is demonstrated. The device has the ability to self-route an incoming packet between two output ports depending on the presence or absence of a refer-ente wavelength in the packet. The underlying mechanism is the nearly-degenerate four-wave mixing (ND-FWM) interaction in a semiconductor gain medium. The implementation of the device in a broad-area trav-eling wave semiconductor optical amplifier shows a +8.2 dB switching efficiency and −28.8 dB crosstalk. The recognition bandwidth is as narrow as 0.03. Å and the 3 dB switching bandwidth is 42 nm. We also obtain a high signal-to-noise ratio of 32.9 dB.

© 1997 Optical Society of America