Fault Tolerant Distributed Optoelectronic Switch

The primary goal of the proposed Phase I effort is to develop a fault tolerant distributed optoelectronic switch. The crossbar switch will utilize wavelength division multiplexing to increase the throughput and enhance the fault tolerance. In addition,the distributed nature of the switch combined with its utilization of fan-in and fan-out provide a network that is highly fail safe, low latency, and protocal independent. The distributed optoelectronic switch architecture will be implemented with thecompany's enabling optoelectronic integrated circuit technologies. This system architecture can be readily employed in local, storage, metro, and wide area networks that require a high speed, flexible, fault tolerant solution that can be scaled to meetfuture needs. The proposed program will offer a dual-use commercialization opportunity for high speed switching networks because it will provide a protocal independent, fail safe architecture which can be readily implemented into both military andcommercial fiber optic networks. The program technology has significant commercial potential in the LAN, SAN, MAN, and WAN sectors with projected sales in excess of $7 billion by 2003.