Optical Switching

Introduction

Sandip Nandi¹ and Dalia Nandi²

¹Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Kalyani Government Engineering College, Kalyani, West Bengal, India

²Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Indian Institute of Information Technology Kalyani, West Bengal, India

Worldwide demand for enormous information transmission has created an immense need for expansion of capacity for higher generation communication networks. It is predicted that information traffic over the internet will double every year [1]. In this present scenario, Optical networks will be the favored solution to provide enhanced bandwidth for future communication system. Terabytes of information can be transferred between two nodes over the optical links. A switch is embedded in the optical communication system to route the information under the supervision of the control signals. The major limitation for high data communication over an optical link is the use of electronic switches, which will restrict the bandwidth of the link. With the passing of time, optical switches with their improved efficiency and low cost are replacing the traditional electronic switches to overcome the limitations. An optical switch is versatile in nature as it has a large number of usages in communication networks as well as in communication cores of modern‐day high configuration computers with data rates of 1000 Gbps. However, the application of optical switches in networks has some of its own challenges ...