
to an increase in the required drive power to the SOAs and a consequent increase
in the overall power consumption. Further, the accumulation of noise as the optical
signal passes through a large switch negates one of the prime original reasons for
seeking optical transparency, because a large part of the network noise budget is
consumed in the switches.
Electronic Switch Fabrics
A typical high-capacity commercial single-chip electronic cross-connect currently
provides throughputs of around 50 Gbit/s at a line rate of 4 Gb/s, with a power
consumption of 16 W [60]. This power consumption corresponds to 30 pJ of
energy per bit. Szymanski et al. [61] have ...