Self routing optical interconnect

摘要

A self routing optical switch consists of a non linear material 1 surrounded by an array of reflecting or semi-reflecting mirrors or surfaces 3, 4, or 5. These reflecting surfaces reflect some light from the non linear material back to the non linear material. An optical signal beam or optical data packet incident on the non linear material is routed to a selected reflecting surface by including the destination address in the optical signal in the form of the autocorrelation function of the optical signal. The destination is selected by arranging for the round trip propagation time between the non linear material and the semi-reflecting surface to be equal to the time delay between any two peaks in the autocorrelation function. The address and hence autocorrelation function can be changed by varying any combination of the amplitude. phase, frequency or polarisation of the optical signal. This routing information could be in a header or in the data itself and could be removed afterwards if required. This system has the capability to route most of the input signal down the wanted route.