ALL OPTICAL BATCHER BANYAN SWITCH, BATCHER SWITCH, BANYAN SWITCH AND CONTENTION MANAGER

摘要

An all-optical contention manager (94) comprising at least two inputs and at least two outputs, the outputs being arranged to pass signals to a Banyan switch (126), the contention manager (94) being arranged to detect and resolve routing contentions between incoming optical signals (98) prior to outputting the signals, the signals comprising tags (100) containing routing information wherein the contention manager comprises at least one photonic comparator for comparing tags from incoming optical signals in order to detect contention, wherein the photonic comparator comprises a semiconductor optical amplifier arranged to carry out signal processing entirely optically.