Optical Switching

10Optical‐Electrical‐Optical (O‐E‐O) Switches

Piyali Mukherjee

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, University of Engineering & Management, Kolkata, West Bengal, India

10.1 Introduction

The modern‐day internet is very much analogous to the road highways that we encounter in our everyday lives. Consequently, the switching technology may be considered similar to the intersections located at those highways. At these major road intersections, each individual has to wait for their turn unless the traffic light signals the vehicles of a particular lane to pass through. The traffic lights are not naturally timed evenly as major lanes are often given more priority than side lanes. Occasionally, bypass lanes are designed to avoid traffic congestion at the busiest intersections.

Network switches for data transmission perform in a very similar fashion. “Switching” is comprehensively used to illustrate information sorting mechanism which is supposed to ingress into a node of the network followed by distribution through the most appropriate egress route. The preliminary designed information switches documented in literature, are the switches that were used in the rotary phones, being just electrical contacts these would spin on the motor shafts. These switches were later modified to be designed as a row of chassis. Additionally, the medium of data transport gradually embellished from copper cables to optical fibers. Optical switching technology has progressed generation ...