Abstract
Optical queues, usually constructed by optical Switches and fiber Delay Lines (SDL), are the key elements for conflict resolution in optical packet switching. It is recently shown in [6] that several optical queues constructed by SDL elements are indeed infinite dimensional switches in time and they can be constructed by many classical constructions in the switching theory. A practical and challenging issue in the constructions of optical queues is on the fault tolerant capability of such constructions. In Chapter 2, we focus on the constructions of fault tolerant optical linear compressors and linear decompressors. The basic network element for our constructions is scaled optical memory cell, which is constructed by a 2 × 2 optical crossbar switch and a fiber delay line. In Chapter 3, we consider the constructions of optical queues with a limited number of recirculations through the fibers in such SDL constructions. Such a limitation on the number of recirculations comes from practical feasibility considerations, such as crosstalk, power loss, amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) from the Erbium doped fiber amplifiers (EDFA), and the pattern effect of the optical switches. In Chapter 4, we propose two new constructions for multicast flexible delay lines that use the unicast flexible delay lines as the basic construction elements. As an application, we show that multicast flexible delay lines can be used for the constructions of optical multicast switches with 100% throughput.