High Utilization-Efficiency Multicast in Optical Benes Switching Structure

Some unicast routing algorithms have been proposed by some researchers to calculate path on optical switch. However, in order to enable optical switching to realize the multicast routing like electrical switching, we propose a high utilization-efficiency multicast method for Benes network based on Mach–Zehnder Interferometer (MZI), which can achieve the same power output at the destination output port of the multicast signal. The simulation results show that the proposed method can correctly route the multicast signal. The analysis also revealed that some optimization strategies used in the method can save network resources, thereby improving the success rate of multicast routing.