All-Optical Label Swapping Using Bistable Semiconductor Ring Laser in an Optical Switching Node

This paper demonstrates an optical node that simultaneous carries out multicast optical switching and all-optical label swapping. While the optical payload is being forwarded by a fast optical switch matrix, the optical label is processed by a semiconductor ring laser (SRL) bistable. Old address bits in the label are erased by optically blocking the switching of the ring laser and new address bits are inserted by modulating the output from SRL directly. This label swapping scheme is the first demonstration of bit-level data processing using the all-optical logic capabilities of a semiconductor ring laser.