All-optical packet switching and label buffering by MMI-BLD optical flip-flop

All-optical packet switching and label buffering have been demonstrated using multimode interference bistable laser diode optical flip-flops and all-optical Mach-Zehnder interferometer switches. The optical flip-flop buffered the injected optical label for the one packet duration and drove the all-optical switch through cross-phase modulation to switch the optical packet. Error-free operation for output 10-Gb/s optical packets from the switch was obtained with negligible power penalty. The presented packet switching has potential of ultra-fast switching and transparency of data rate and format, and will be useful in the future optical packet switching networks.