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40-Gb/s Optical Packet Buffer Using Conversion/Dispersion-Based Delays

Omer Faruk Yilmaz, Student Member, IEEE, Scott R. Nuccio, Xiaoxia Wu, and Alan E. Willner, Fellow, IEEE, Fellow, OSA

AbstractWe experimentally demonstrate a continuously tunable, all-optical packet buffer based on conversion dispersion delays. 40-Gb/s asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) packets with return-to-zero ONOFF keying data are buffered up to ten-packet length (116 ns). The packet buffer performance is characterized for several delay values. Power penalties of 3, 2, and 0.5 dB for zero-packet, ve-packet, and ten-packet delays are achieved, respectively, at a bit error rate (BER) of 10 9 . Reconguration of the packet buffer is also investigated and reconguration times as fast as 25 ps are shown by using a high-speed optical switch to toggle between wavelength conversion pumps. The reconguration is also demonstrated for a 1 ns guard time between the packets. It is observed that reconguration with this method results in 1.1 and 2 dB extra power penalty at 10 9 BER for 1 and 25 ps guard times, respectively. Index TermsNonlinear optics, optical buffer, optical ber communication, optical packet switching, optical signal processing.

I. INTRODUCTION

S network data rates and capacity grow, the limited scaling and performance of electrical routers may become a bottleneck for system operation. One potential technology for highly efcient and high-capacity networking is optical packet switching [1]. A critical challenge for any optical switch is the need to implement the rapid resolution of contention and congestion within the core routers [2]. Traditionally, this has been difcult to realize in the optical domain due to the lack of optical memory. Typically, optical contention resolution can take the form of packet dropping, wavelength conversion, deection routing, and buffering. While the rst methods may be inefcient to implement on a large scale, optical buffering has shown the potential for high-capacity operation. Several techniques have been published that demonstrate optical buffers, including: 1) using material resonances or coupled resonant structures to decrease group velocity [3], [4], and 2) feedback or feed-forward ber delay-line buffers [5][9]. These buffers tend to switch between a discrete set of xed delay times producing a tradeoff between the amount of delay and the delay granularity, or provide small continuous delays (up to several bits) limited by the system bandwidth or distortions. Optical buffering can also be achieved by relative

delays based on the conversion/dispersion techniques, which are shown to offer large delays [10][12], with ne granularity [13]. Conversion/dispersion delays tunably wavelength convert the optical signal before passing it through a chromatic-dispersive element and wavelength converting back to the original wavelength. The amount of delay can be tuned by changing the converted wavelength. Recently, conversion dispersion has been used to generate a tunable delay (up to 13.7 ns) capable of buffering a 40 Gb/s variable-length packets by two packet lengths [14]. However, residual chromatic dispersion limits the buffer from accommodating larger packet sizes and larger delays while reconguration is not shown. In this paper, we demonstrate and characterize a ten-packetdepth, 40-Gb/s optical buffer with a 0.5 ns reconguration time using a 116 ns, continuously tunable conversion/dispersion delay [15]. The use of a continuously tunable optical delay allows for adjustment to changes in packet size and data rate of the incoming optical signal. The buffer is both amplitudeand phase-maintaining, making it transparent to a host of modulation formats. Optical phase conjugation is used to minimize the residual dispersion limitation in the delay [16], [17]. Rapid reconguration by switching between wavelength converting pumps is shown for switching windows as fast as 25 ps (1 bit time). II. CONCEPT A conceptual block diagram of the buffer is shown in Fig. 1. The buffer consists of two functional paths in parallel. The incoming packet stream is split into two and sent to these two paths for processing. The upper path induces the relative delay on the desired packet(s) by utilizing the conversion/dispersion based delay, while the lower path is used for deletion of packet(s) from their original time slot(s). Additionally, this gives the functionality of emptying any desired time slot if a data packet is not needed. In the upper path, three wavelength conversion stages are used to complete the relative delay for the selected packet(s). A highly dispersive medium is used for the wavelength dependant delay that utilizes the group velocity variation due to the chromatic dispersion [10][12], [15], [18][21]. A conceptual block diagram of delays based on the conversion/dispersion technique is shown in Fig. 2. The input signal is wavelength-converted to that will determine the relative a desired wavelength delay in the dispersive medium. Raman amplication is used in the dispersive medium to overcome the losses [22]. After the dispersive medium, a second wavelength conversion is utilized to phase conjugate the signal to a nearby wavelength . The phase-conjugated signal is then sent back through the same dispersive element to make use of the same group velocity

Manuscript received May 23, 2009; revised August 12, 2009. First published September 29, 2009; current version publishedFebruary 05, 2010. This work was supported by the Air Force Research Laboratory, and the Defense Advanced Research Agency under Agreement FA8650-08-1-7820 and Agreement N00014-05-1-0053. The authors are with the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089 USA (e-mail: oyilmaz@usc.edu; nuccio@usc.edu; xiaoxia@usc.edu; willner@usc.edu). Digital Object Identier 10.1109/JLT.2009.2030900

0733-8724/$26.00 2010 IEEE

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Fig. 3. Illustration of reconguration of the optical buffer. Packets to be delayed are extracted to the corresponding wavelengths in the rst wavelength conversion stage. Thus, they experience different amounts of delay in the dispersive element. The reconguration should take place within the guard time between the packets. Therefore, the minimum guard time without any data loss is determined by the reconguration speed.

Fig. 1. Conceptual block diagram of the demonstrated optical buffer. Input packet stream is sent to two paths. Upper path induces the relative delay onto the selected packet(s), where the lower path deletes any desired packet(s).

Fig. 2. Conceptual block diagram of the conversion/dispersion technique used to generate relative delays in the optical buffer. The rst wavelength conversion controls the amount of delay. The second wavelength conversion is the phase conjugation stage. After the delay, the signal is converted back to the original wavelength to have a wavelength transparent delay.

dependence. Therefore, the induced relative delay is almost doubled while dispersion compensation is also achieved. Hence, induced by the system is the maximum relative delay approximately equal to , where is the difference between the minimum and the maximum wavelengths that the signal is converted to, and D is the dispersion of the medium. In our scheme, the rst wavelength conversion stage uses gated pump(s) for the wavelength conversion. The pump(s) is/are turned on and synchronized only for the duration of the desired packet(s). This results in wavelength conversion of only the packet(s) that is (are) going to be delayed. Extracted packets are then sent to the dispersive medium to induce the relative delay. Phase conjugation, as described, is used to double the delay and compensate the dispersion. After the second pass through the dispersive element, a third wavelength conversion stage is used to convert the delayed packet(s) back to the original input wavelength. Some additional ber is used in the lower path to emulate ight time matching/synchronization of the two paths prior to combining. The faster wavelength for the selected packet(s) is used as the reference: The time alignments of the two paths are realized such that this wavelength results in no relative delay with respect to the original packet time slot. Hence, the output packet stream is identical to the input packet stream for this wavelength. This feature allows the buffer to be used with tunable packet sizes and variable bit rates as the delay is continuous between zero and the maximum value. Reconguration of the packet buffer requires tunability of the delay within a guard time between the packets as illustrated in

Fig. 3. The most rapid reconguration is needed when two consecutive packets are to be buffered by different delay values. This requires wavelength conversion of the consecutive packets to two different wavelengths. As demonstrated in [23] a single gated pump can enable bit- and packet-level wavelength conversion. For the reconguration, two separate gated pumps are required to realize the wavelength conversion of two consecutive packets to two different wavelengths. A fast 2 2 optical switch is utilized to realize the switching between packet extraction pumps for this purpose. Two consecutive packets entering the dispersive element at different wavelengths will have different delays. However, a phase conjugation scheme that maintains the relative packet wavelength difference is required for the phase conjugation process. We have used two wavelength conversion stages in parallel that phase conjugates the extracted packets independently, where other methods that can allow realization of this process may also be possible. If the buffer is to process more than two packets independently at once, a fast tuning laser or a laser bank with a large scale optical switch is necessary for the extraction process. This case would also require more packet signals to be phase-conjugated, and hence, the number of phase conjugation stages should be increased accordingly. III. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP A. Buffer The experimental block diagram of the demonstrated buffer is shown in Fig. 4. A 40-Gb/s packetized input signal is generated by programming a pulse-pattern generator (PPG). The packet stream is composed of 11 424-bit-long (53 B), asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) packets where packet slots 2, 6, and 11 are left open to allow buffered packet to be reinserted. Initially, a 1 ns guard time is used by programming 40 zero bits between the consecutive packets. A MachZehnder modulator (MZM) is used for data modulation of the optical carrier ( 1540.82 nm) with the packetized data. Another MZM driven with a 40-GHz RF clock is used for full-rate pulse carving to achieve a 50% return-to-zero ONOFF keying (RZ-OOK) waveform. The input packet stream is rst split into two copies, one for the delay of the selected packet and the other for the deletion of the selected packet as described in the previous section. In the rst copy (upper path) a packet (packet 1) is selected to be delayed. This packet is extracted to the required wavelength that will induce the desired delay. This is achieved by using a two-pump wavelength conversion scheme in a periodically poled lithium niobate (PPLN) waveguide,

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Fig. 4. Experimental setup for the optical buffer. Modications for demonstration of reconguration are shown with dotted lines and italic titles. MZM: MachZehnder modulator; CLK: clock; TDL: tunable delay line; BPF: bandpass lter; DCF: dispersion-compensating ber; SSMF: standard single-mode ber; PPLN: periodically poled lithium niobate waveguide; Rx: preamplied receiver.

PPLN-1 [24]. The processes of sum frequency generation (SFG) between two pumps symmetrically located with respect to the quasi-phase matching (QPM) wavelength of the PPLN waveguide followed by difference frequency generation (DFG) between the sum signal and a continuous-wave (CW) pump in the PPLN waveguide results in the idler generated at . We have the frequency modulated the DFG CW pump with a MZM to generate the gated pump for the packet extraction process. A PPG synchronized with the input data is used to generate the gating signal, which is ON only for the duration of packet 1. The gated pump is then synchronized with packet 1 in PPLN-1 using an optical tunable delay line (TDL), leading to the extraction of packet 1 to by the relation. As the input signal is used as a pump, the extracted packet is not phase conjugated. The PPLN-1 waveguide is 4 cm long and the QPM wavelength is tuned to 1551.6 nm. By tuning the gated pump wavelength , the wavelength packet 1 is extracted to is tuned in the 1552.51560.2 nm range, corresponding to the maximum (116 ns: 10 packets) and minimum (0 ns: 0 packet) delays, respectively. Packet 1 is then ltered by an optical bandpass lter (OBPF) with a bandwidth of 1.5 nm and passed through ps/nm of dispersion-compensating ber (DCF) [ ps/(nm km)], which is Raman-pumped with two copropagating pumps at 1450 nm and two counter-propagating pumps at 1460 nm (150 mW each) to mitigate the 18 dB loss of the DCF. The dispersed packet is then -converted to using degenerate four-wave mixing (FWM) in a highly nonlinear ber (HNLF) for phase conjugation [25]. A CW pump and packet 1 signal is amplied with erbium-doped ber ampliers (EDFAs) and ltered with 2-nm lters prior to launching into the HNLF. A phase modulation method for stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) suppression is not employed. A 2.2 nm offset is kept between the phase-conjugating pump wavelength and for all different cases of corresponding to different delay values. Hence, the phase-conjugated signal wavelength ranges from 1556.9 to 1564.6 nm. The HNLF used for phase conjugation is 330 m

of 25 W km , a zero long with a nonlinear coefcient dispersion wavelength (ZDW) of 1562.2 nm, and a dispersion slope 0.026 ps/(nm km). The phase-conjugated packet 1 is ltered by an OBPF with a 1.2 nm bandwidth, amplied, and sent back through the DCF to complete the delay and compensate for the intrachannel dispersion. An 8.2-km-long SMF, corresponding to a total dispersion of 140 ps/nm, is used to compensate for the residual dispersion offset caused by the nonzero dispersion slope of the DCF. Following the delay and dispersion compensation, packet 1 is converted back to the original wavelength using a second PPLN waveguide, PPLN-2, with a QPM wavelength of 1552.8 nm. A two-pump conversion scheme similar to the packet extraction stage is used for wavelength conversion in PPLN-2. Two-pump lasers are tuned according to such that the converted output signal is always at . This signal, delayed packet 1 at , is then ltered with a 1.2 nm lter, and nally, combined with the signal from the lower path by a 3-dB coupler. We used two different mediums for wavelength conversions in the buffer, where ideally similar medium could be used in all wavelength conversion stages to realize the buffer. The wavelength conversion techniques are polarization dependent and we used polarization controllers to maximize the conversion efciency for each stage. The second copy of the input packet stream is sent to the lower path for deletion of packets. It might be desirable to delete the packet(s) being delayed from the original time slots; however, any unnecessary packet(s) can be deleted from the stream to create open time slots. An MZM modulator is used for the deletion process driven by an RF signal generated by a PPG synchronized with the data. The packet to be deleted is time aligned with the PPG signal using a TDL, as shown in Fig. 4. After the MZM, the packet stream is sent through 60 km of SMF, followed by 10 km DCF ( ps/nm) to emulate the time synchronization with the upper path. An EDFA is used to amplify the signal to match the power of the signal combined from the upper path. A TDL is used to match the two path lengths exactly (within the repeating 11 packet data stream) for the faster wave-

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Fig. 5. Packet 1 being buffered from time slot 1 to time slot 11. Eye diagrams of the signal shown are also given. (a) 40-Gb/s input packet stream (424 bits per ( 1552.5 nm) packet, 1 ns guard time); (b) packet 1 after extraction to  in PPLN-1. (c) Packet 1 after double passing through the DCF and after SMF, ( 1556.9 nm) due to phase conjugation; (d) output packet signal is at  and original packet 1 is stream where delayed packet 1 is converted to  deleted from time slot 1 in the lower path.

Fig. 6. Experimental spectra of the wavelength conversion processes in the (1550.6 buffer. (a) Packet extraction in the PPLN-1 with gated pump  nm). PPLN-1 QPM wavelength is shown with a dotted line ( 1551.6 nm); (b) phase conjugation in the HNLF; (c) delayed packet 1 is wavelength converted in PPLN-2. PPLN-2 QPM is shown with the dotted line and is at back to  1552.7 nm. The scale is the same, 8 and 3 nm/division, for all plots.

length of the selected packet(s). The time alignments of the two paths are adjusted such that this wavelength results in no relative delay with respect to the original packet time slot. Thus, a reference (zero delay) is achieved for the buffer. The resulting output packet stream is then sent to a preamplied receiver for bit-error-rate (BER) measurements. A 1.2-nm lter is used in the preamplied receiver following the low noise EDFA. B. Reconguration For the demonstration of recongurability, the experimental setup is slightly modied. The reconguration experiment is conducted for two different guard times: 1 ns (40 bits) and 25 ps (1 bit) by programming the input packet stream in the PPG. In the rst wavelength conversion stage, a 2 2 20-GHz lithium niobate switch is utilized to switch between the dummy pump lasers. The switch is driven with a programmed PPG synchronized with the input signal clock. The output of the switch is sent to an MZM to gate the pumps such that they only exist during the duration of the two selected packets. The transition between the pump lasers occurs within the guard time between the packets. Hence, two consecutive packets in the data stream will be wavelength-converted by two different DFG pumps, with the and . An OBPF (bandwidth of 3.5 nm) is used to lter the extracted packets. Packets are then sent through the DCF ( ps/nm). The QPM of the PPLN-1 is tuned to 1551.6 nm. The total power lunched to the PPLN-1 is kept under 27 dBm. The signal after the DCF is split into two copies to realize the phase conjugation on each packet with two independent phase conjugation stages, as shown in Fig. 4 with dotted lines. The same phase conjugation setup mentioned in the previous section is used for one of the packets. For the second phase conjugation, a 100 m HNLF with W km nm, and ps/(nm km), is used. A TDL is used to match the path lengths of the two-phase conjugation stages. After the phase conjugation, the signals are combined and sent back

Fig. 7. (a) Relative delay achieved for the system for a 40-Gb/s input signal. (b) Output packet stream for various buffering scenarios including zero and maximum delay.

through the DCF as discussed before. After the DCF, a 4 km spool of SSMF is used for the residual dispersion compensation. A third wavelength conversion stage is not employed for the reconguration experiments. However, multiplexing of these packets to a single wavelength in a PPLN is possible, as shown in [14]. The dispersion compensated packets are then combined with the packet stream from the lower path and sent to the receiver. Delayed packets are not deleted from the original packet stream in the lower path. In the receiver, no lters are used as the multiplexed signal is present on multiple wavelengths. IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION A. Buffer Results Fig. 5 shows the evolution of a packet (packet 1) in the buffer for the longest delay value along with the corresponding eye diagrams. The corresponding spectra for each wavelength conversion stage are shown in Fig. 6. Fig. 5(a) shows the 11-packet-

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Fig. 8. Experimental spectra of the three wavelength conversion stages for (a) maximum (116 ns), (b) middle, and (c) zero delay. The rst row shows the packet extraction in PPLN-1, second row shows the phase conjugation in HNLF, and third row shows the wavelength conversion of the delayed packet 1 to the original wavelength in PPLN-2. For all plots, the center wavelength is 1552.7 nm and the scale is 3 nm/division for horizontal and 8 dB/division for vertical axis.

long input stream to the buffer where the guard time between the 1552.5 nm packets is 1 ns. Packet 1 is extracted to in PPLN-1, as shown in Fig. 5(b). The spectrum for the extraction process is shown in Fig. 6(a). The average power of the packet 1 signal is 13 dBm. As this signal is OFF for 10/11 of the duration, the peak power of the signal is 10 dB higher than the average power. Packet 1 at is then sent through the DCF and then phase conjugated to , as shown in Fig. 6(b). Conversion efciency for the degenerate FWM process is 16 dB. After the second pass through the DCF, the packet is delayed by 116 ns. The delayed and dispersion-compensated packet 1 after the 8.2-km SMF is shown in Fig. 5(c). Following this step, packet 1 is wavelength-converted from back to the input signal wavelength in PPLN-2, as shown in Fig. 6(c). In the lower path, packet 1 is deleted from the input stream by the MZM. Both paths are then coupled together forming the output packet stream, as shown in Fig. 5(d). As shown, packet 1 is deleted from time slot 1 and buffered to the 11th time slot. The relative delay achieved by the wavelength conversion/dispersion process is shown in Fig. 7(a). The maximum relative delay achieved is 116 ns that corresponds to a buffer depth of 10 packets including the 1 ns buffer time between packets ( ns). The granularity of the delay is limited by the granularity of the pump lasers, which is 1 pm. This results in a delay resolution of 15 ps with the amount of dispersion used. The buffer is tested for various delay values. The set of delays with , and nm, corresponding to delays of 0, 1, 5, and 10 packets, respectively, are shown in Fig. 7(b). In all cases, delayed packet 1 is converted back to the original wavelength in PPLN-2 by tuning the pumps and . The complete set of wavelength conversion spectra for all three stages for minimum, middle, and maximum delays are shown in Fig. 8(a)(c), respectively. The wavelength of extracted packet 1 is controlled by the wavelength of as shown. A 3.3 nm wavelength separation between the and is kept for all delay cases as shown in the second row. The third wavelength conversion process converts

for each the delayed packet back to the input wavelength delay value, as shown in the third row of Fig. 8. In the cases of (a) maximum and (b) middle delay, the third wavelength conversion stage uses the packet 1 signal as one of the pumps for SFG process, which is not a phase conjugating process. For the zero-delay case (c) the packet signal is used for the DFG process in a different two-pump conguration, since a dummy laser as used in (a) and (b) would overlap with the signal itself. Instead, the signal is used as the dummy signal for the DFG process. This is a phase conjugation process as opposed to (a) and (b); however, it does not change the buffer application. In general, for the buffer, only the second wavelength conversion stage needs to be phase conjugating for compensation of the dispersion. The delayed packet 1 at is then combined with the lower path signal where packet 1 is deleted from the original time slot to generate the output packet stream, with packet 1 buffered to the desired time slot, as given in Fig. 7(b). BER measurements are performed to characterize system performance for various delay values, as shown in Fig. 9. The BER test-set is programmed for the new packet stream generated at the buffer output. The BER performance of the buffer for delay values of 0, 58, and 116 ns are shown. We observe 3, 2 and 0.5 dB power penalties at BERs of for zero-packet, ve-packet, and ten-packet delays, respectively. We believe that proximity to the high-power pump induces a higher penalty for the zero-packet delay due to the nonideal roll-off prole of the lter used in the packet extraction stage. This causes some pump power to leak as the pump is not perfectly suppressed. In addition to this, residual dispersion varies for different delay values as the SMF used is xed length and will perfectly compensate only for a particular wavelength. Hence, the uncompensated residual dispersion gives an additional power penalty for the zero-packet delay case. B. Reconguration Results Rapid reconguration times from 1 ns down to 25 ps are also demonstrated using a 20-GHz 2 2 lithium niobate switch. The input packet stream of eight packets is shown in Fig. 10(a),

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Fig. 9. BER performances for several buffering scenarios. Back-to-back performance and BER performance of the signal at the output of lower path (with packet 1 deleted) is also given for comparison. Fig. 11. Experimental spectra of the wavelength conversion processes in the buffer. (a) Packet extraction in the PPLN-1 with gated pump  (1550.6 nm). PPLN-1 QPM wavelength is shown with a dotted line ( 1551.6 nm). (b) Phase conjugation in the HNLF. (c) Delayed packet 1 is wavelength converted back to  . PPLN-2 QPM is shown with the dotted line and is at 1552.7 nm.

Fig. 10. Packets 2 and 3 being buffered by three and ve time slots in the reconguration experiment. (a) Input packet sequence of eight packets. The guard time between the packets 2 and 3 is 25 ps. The inset shows the guard time. (b) Illustration of the gated pumps generated by the switch and the MZM in the packet extraction stage. (c) Extracted packets 2 and 3. (d) Packets 2 and 3 after the second pass through the DCF. (e) Output packet sequence where packets 2 and 3 are inserted at the corresponding time slots.

where packets 2 and 3 are going to be buffered to time slots #5 and #7, respectively. The inset shows the buffer time of 25 ps between packets 2 and 3. As only packets 2 and 3 are going to be delayed, the guard time between the rest of the packets is kept at 1 ns. A PPG toggles the switch between two-pump 1556.0 nm and 1557.84 nm) in the lasers ( packet extraction stage (PPLN-1), as illustrated in Fig. 10(b). The pump switching signal and the clocking signal are arranged such that only packets 2 and 3 are extracted to two ( 1547.16 nm) and different wavelengths, ( 1545.36 nm), respectively. The extracted packet stream is shown in Fig. 10(c). Note that the two extracted packets are at different wavelengths. The experimental spectra for the reconguration experiment with 25 ps guard time are shown in Fig. 11. Fig. 11(a) shows the spectra of the cascaded SFG-DFG process with the two gated pumps in PPLN-1. Packets 2 and 3 experience different amounts of group delay ( ns, ns) in the DCF due to the difference in wavenm). Packet 3, which is length ( at a shorter wavelength, experiences a larger group delay. By

using two conjugation stages, the two packets are separately ( 1553.9 nm) and ( 1552.1 conjugated to nm) such that the wavelength difference between the two packets is preserved ( nm). The experimental spectra of the phase conjugation process for both packets are shown in Fig. 11(b) and (c). As packet 3 is still at a shorter wavelength, the relative delay between the packets accumulates ( ns, ns) when the two signals are sent back through the DCF for dispersion compensation. If a single phase conjugation stage with a single pump were used for both signals, packet 3 would be at a longer wavelength after phase conjugation ( nm), hence cancelling the relative delay during the second pass through the DCF. The signals at the output of the phase conjugation stages are combined after timing of the both arms are adjusted by a TDL on one of the phase conjugation stages. This is required as the equipment used in the phase conjugation stages is not identical. The time alignment is checked by tuning the gated pumps to identical wavelengths such that packets 2 and 3 experience the same relative delay. After combining two signals, phase-conjugated packets 2 and 3 are ltered off by a 4 nm lter. Then, they are sent back through the DCF. After this second pass through the DCF, the delayed packets are coupled with the signal from the lower path. Fig. 11(e) shows the output packet sequence and eye diagram at the output. As the guard time between the other packets is 1 ns, the guard time between packets 2 and 6 (as well as between packets 6 and 3) is 500 ps at the output packet stream. The same experiment is repeated for a guard time of 1 ns between packets 2 and 3. In the reconguration experiments, packets 2 and 3 are not deleted from their original time slots in the lower path. Thus, the original copies along with the delayed copies coexist in the output packet stream as in Fig. 11(e). The transient response of the 2 2 lithium niobate switch is shown in Fig. 12. The rise (10%) and fall (90%) times for the switch are measured to be 25 ps for both output ports. This, therefore, limits the guard time to be 25 ps, or one bit at 40 Gb/s. A zero guard time allows one bit to leak into both packets, in the packet extraction process, due to the poor extinction ratio.

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Fig. 12. Transient response of the 2 2 lithium niobate switch used for toggling between pump lasers in packet extraction. The rise/fall time is 25 ps for both output ports.

Fig. 14. BER performances of the buffer reconguration experiment for guard times of 1 and 25 ps.

characterized with a new back-to-back BER measurement. BER measurements for the reconguration experiments with guard times of 1 and 25 ps are shown in Fig. 14. Reconguration of the packet buffer shows power penalties of 4.1 and 5 dB for guard times of 1 and 25 ps, respectively. Compared to the buffer-only case, 1 ns reconguration introduces an extra 1.1 dB penalty, which, we believe, is due to the lowered wavelength conversion efciency of the packet extraction stage in the multipacket scheme as the gated pump powers are decreased due to the insertion of the 2 2 switch prior to the amplication by the xed gain EDFA. The additional 0.9 dB penalty for the 25 ps reconguration case may be attributed nite extinction ratio ( 25 dB) and the limited transient response of the 2 2 optical switch. V. CONCLUSION
Fig. 13. Last and rst several bits of the packets 2 and 3, respectively. (a) Packets 2 and 3 from the input packet stream with a guard time (i) 25 ps and (ii) 1 ns. (b) Packets 2 and 3 after extraction in the PPLN-1. For packet 2 (packet 3), packet 3 (packet 2) extraction pump is turned off for demonstration purposes. (c) Packets 2 and 3 after the delay (before the combination with the lower arm) when both gated pumps are ON. The scale is 100 ps/division for all the plots except (a)-(ii).

However, this suggests that zero guard time may be achievable by using a larger bandwidth switch. Fig. 13(a) shows the guard time between the packets 2 and 3, and the rst and last several bits for (i) 25 ps and (ii) 1 ns cases. The edges of the two packets after the extraction are also shown in Fig. 13(b). For demonstration of the gating effect of the switch, the corresponding pump of a packet is turned off in each case. Therefore, Fig. 13(b) plots only show one of the extracted packets while the other one is not extracted due to the gating effect of the switch. Fig. 13(c) shows corresponding edges of the packets after the delay before combining with the lower arm of the packet buffer. However, for this case, both of the extracting pumps are ON, and packets are simultaneously ns, and ns. Due to delayed by the delay, the neighboring time slot appears empty in Fig. 13(c). The effect of the reconguration setup is characterized with BER measurements as well. The output bit pattern is programmed to the error detector for each experiment with different guard times. As described before, no lters were used in the receiver for this experiment. Therefore, the receiver is

We have demonstrated an optical buffer that is capable of buffering ATM packets up to ten-packet length with a tunable 116 ns delay achieved by conversion/dispersion technique. The relative delay used for the buffer is continuously tunable with 15 ps granularity. Thus, the packet buffer can be tuned to support different bit rates and packet lengths. As the wavelength conversion stages used in the buffer preserve the phase information, this buffer has the potential to be used for phase-encoded packets as well [12], [26], [27]. Additionally, the recongurability of the buffer is tested. Using a fast optical switch to toggle between the converted wavelengths that dene the delay, we showed that a reconguration time as fast as 25 ps are potentially achievable for buffers with conversion/dispersion-based delays. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors thank Dr. Fejer and Dr. Langrock of Stanford University for providing the PPLN waveguides and Dr. J. Wang and Mr. I. Fazal for fruitful discussions. The U.S. Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints for Governmental purposes notwithstanding any copyright notation thereon. REFERENCES
[1] H. J. S. Dorren, M. T. Hill, Y. Liu, N. Calabretta, A. Srivatsa, F. M. Huijskens, H. de Waardt, and G. D. Khoe, Optical packet switching and buffering by using all-optical signal processing methods, J. Lightw. Technol., vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 212, Jan. 2003.

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[22] Y. Okawachi, M. A. Foster, X. Chen, A. C. Turner-Foster, R. Salem, M. Lipson, C. Xu, and A. L. Gaeta, Large tunable delays using parametric mixing and phase conjugation in Si nanowaveguides, Opt. Exp., vol. 16, pp. 1034910357, Jul. 2008. [23] Q. Lin, R. Jiang, C. F. Marki, C. J. McKinstrie, R. Jopson, J. Ford, G. P. Agrawal, and S. Radic, 40-Gb/s optical switching and wavelength multicasting in a two-pump parametric device, IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., vol. 17, no. 11, pp. 23762378, Nov. 2005. [24] M. H. Chou, I. Brener, M. M. Fejer, E. E. Chaban, and S. B. Christman, 1.5-m-band wavelength conversion based on cascaded second-order nonlinearity in LiNbO waveguides, IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., vol. 11, no. 6, pp. 653655, Jun. 1999. [25] S. J. B. Yoo, Wavelength conversion technologies for WDM network applications, J. Lightw. Technol., vol. 14, no. 6, pp. 955966, Jun. 1996. [26] P. A. Andersen, T. Tokle, Y. Geng, C. Peucheret, and P. Jeppesen, Wavelength conversion of a 40-Gb/s RZ-DPSK signal using fourwave mixing in a dispersion-attened highly nonlinear photonic crystal ber, IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., vol. 17, no. 9, pp. 19081910, Sep. 2005. [27] P. Devgan, R. Tang, V. Grigoryan, and P. Kumar, Highly efcient multichannel wavelength conversion of DPSK signals, J. Lightw. Technol., vol. 24, no. 10, pp. 36773682, Oct. 2006. Omer Faruk Yilmaz (S03) received the B.S. degree from the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey, in 2004, and the M.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of California, Riverside, in 2006. He is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. His current research interests include high-speed optical signal processing and advanced modulation formats.

Scott R. Nuccio , photograph and biography not available at the time of publication.

Xiaoxia Wu , photograph and biography not available at the time of publication.

Alan E. Willner (S87M88SM93F04) received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Columbia University, New York, NY, in 1988. He was with AT&T Bell Laboratories and Bellcore. He is currently a Professor of electrical engineering at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He has authored or coauthored 775publications, including two books and 25 patents. His current research interests include area of optical communications. He was the Editor-in-Chief of the OSA Optics Letters. Prof. Willner is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America (OSA) and was a Fellow of the Semiconductor Research Corporation. He was the President of the IEEE Photonics Society [formerly known as Lasers and Electro-Optics Society (LEOS)], the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE/OSA JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, the Co-Chair of the OSA Science and Engineering Council, the General Co-Chair of the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO), the Chair of the IEEE TAB Ethics and Conict Resolution Committee, the General Chair of the LEOS Annual Meeting Program, the Program Co-Chair of the OSA Annual Meeting, and Steering and Program Committee Member of the Conference on Optical Fiber Communications (OFC). He has received the National Science Foundation (NSF) Presidential Faculty Fellows Award from the White House, the Packard Foundation Fellowship, the NSF National Young Investigator Award, the Fulbright Foundation Senior Scholars Award, the IEEE Photonics Society Distinguished Traveling Lecturer Award, the USC University-Wide Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Eddy Award from Pennwell for the Best Contributed Technical Article, and the Armstrong Foundation Memorial Prize for the highest ranked EE Masters degree graduate student at Columbia University.