Abstract—The small polarization dependence (< 1 dB) of optical components becomes significant in optical multistage interconnection networks. The cumulative effect can ultimately limit physical layer scalability by changing the maximum number of internal nodes that optical packets can traverse error free. It is shown that for nodes based on commercial semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) switches with polarization-dependent gains of less than 0.35 dB, the maximum number of cascaded nodes changes by as much as 20 nodes, depending on both the packet wavelength and its state of polarization. This deviation in the number of nodes could correspond to a 100-fold decrease in the number of interconnected ports of an optical interconnection network such as the data vortex. This dramatic effect is explained in terms of optical signal-to-noise ratio degradation due to accumulated amplified spontaneous emission noise originating from the SOA device in the node. Index Terms—Multistage interconnection networks (MINs), optical packet switching, polarization-sensitive devices, semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA). I.

Abstract—The physical layer scalability of multistage interconnection networks is determined by the maximum number of internal switching nodes that packets can traverse error-free. We show that for nodes based on commercial semiconductor optical amplifier switches with polarization-dependent gain of less than 0.35 dB, the maximum number of cascaded nodes could vary by as much as 20 nodes, depending both on the packet wavelength and its state of polarization. We explain such a dramatic effect by optical signal-to-noise ratio degradation due to accumulated amplified spontaneous emission noise with the number of nodes. Index Terms—Optical packet switching (OPS), polarization-sensitive devices, semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA). I.

En los servicios de telecomunicaciones, la necesidad de hacer uso intensivo de las aplicaciones ha presionado por un constante incremento del ancho de banda. Particularmente una de las tecnologías más promisorias, que ha permitido estos incrementos de ancho de banda, son los elementos ópticos, de tal manera que en las redes de comunicación los elementos electrónicos sean sustituidos por dichos elementos ópticos. En esta publicación se discute una técnica basada en la rotación no lineal del estado de polarización de una señal óptica conectada al amplificador semiconductor óptico. Se presenta un experimento, basado en este efecto, para realizar la conversión a 2,5 Gbits/s. La característica del conversor de longitud onda es probada en propagación directa e inversa. Se ha encontrado que conversión de la longitud de onda es independiente de longitud de onda (la conversión no depende del valor de la longitud de onda) en la modalidad de propagación directa no invertida. Palabras clave: Amplificador semiconductor óptico, conversión de la longitud de onda, rotación no lineal del estado de polarización. As the need for higher and higher bandwidths in telecommunication systems continues, it is widely predicted that at some point in the future optical processing will need to be performed all-optically. Several techniques have been proposed to perform such all-optical signal processing. In this paper a technique based on the nonlinear rotation in the state