Scalability and energy consumption of optical and electronic packet switching

Abstract

This paper compares the scalability and energy consumption of switch fabrics for optical and electronic packet switching. In particular, arrayed-waveguide-grating (AWG)-based switches, semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) gate arrays, electro-optic phased-array switches, and microresonator-based switches are compared with state-of-the-art electronic switch fabrics. The analysis includes the key contributors to energy consumption and the scaling capabilities of each technology. To provide a fair comparison, the analysis takes into account the optical-to-electronic and electronic-to-optical converters and the multiplexers and demultiplexers needed in electronic packet switches. We show that o..