Reconfigurable optical packet header recognition and routing using time-to-wavelength mapping and tunable fiber Bragg gratings for correlation decoding

We achieve reconfigurable optical header recognition and penalty-free routing of a 2.5 Gb/s packet stream with a 1.6-ns guard time. Our method uses cross-gain compression in a semiconductor optical amplifier for time-to-wavelength mapping, and two fiber Bragg grating arrays for tunable correlation decoding. This technique may be of value in future high-speed optical packet-switching nodes.