it rate (potentially far above 100 Gbit/s if OTDM is used), and on the other, the capacity of optical systems to have a much lower power consumption with respect to an analogous electronic system is exploited. Thus, a possible scheme of an optical packet switch working can be that of Figure 10.36: the incoming optical packet is stored in an optical memory. The packet header, exploiting the fact that it has a much smaller number of bits with respect to the payload and thus it can be transmitted at the same time at a much slower bit rate, is detected and sent for pro- cessing to the line card processor. All the forwarding processes are carried out electronically while the packet is stored in the line card. When the destination output port has been calculated, the packet is trans- ferred from the input optical queue to the correct output optical queue via the optical switch and is sent out through a DWDM system. It is possible that some operation has to be done on the packet payload, for example, the verification of an EDC. These operations, however, have to be maintained as simple as possible and have to be performed by digital optics with simple algorithms. This scenario, depicted in Figure 10.36, is naturally only one of the possible scenarios for the introduction of the optical packet systems, and at the end of this section, we will try to describe at least another couple of possibilities. It is, however, clear that the key to enabling whatever form of packet optical network is the development of a new generation of very-high-speed optical components suitable to be integrated onto an optical packet switch. The main components are Optical memories Dynamic optical switches Forwarding table Electronic domain Forwarding Drop the Routing address packet processor LC up LC up Switch fabric Input Output queue queue Optical domain FIGURE 10.36 Possible scheme of an optical packet switch working. Next Generation Networking: Enabling Technologies, Architectures, and Performances Optical logic gateways for operation on the 