Abstract
An experimental demonstration of gridless spectrum and time switching is presented. We propose and demonstrate a bit-rate and modulation-format independent optical cross-connect architecture, based on gridless spectrum selective switch, 20-ms 3D-MEMS and 10-ns PLZT optical switches, that supports arbitrary spectrum allocation and transparent time multiplexing. The architecture is implemented in a four-node field-fiber-linked testbed to transport continuous RZ and NRZ data channels at 12.5, 42.7 and 170.8 Gb/s, and selectively groom sub-wavelength RZ channels at 42.7 Gb/s. We also showed that the architecture is dynamic and can be reconfigured to meet the routing requirements of the network traffic. Results show error-free operation with an end-to-end power penalty between 0.8 dB and 5 dB for all continuous and sub-wavelength channels.
Highlights
Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) has become the standard core transmission technology in existing optical networks
The spectra of the signals transmitted from Node 1 (A'), Node 2 (B') and the local sub-wavelength channels added at Node 3 (C') are shown in Fig. 3(a1), 3(b1) and 3(c1) respectively
We have proposed and experimentally demonstrated an architecture that supports allocation, space switching and time-multiplexing of arbitrary spectrum slices
Summary
Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) has become the standard core transmission technology in existing optical networks. There is a growing range of new technologies that require higher flexibility for allocating spectrum: bit-rate tunable transmitters that vary the number of sub-carriers in an orthogonal frequency division multiplex (OFDM) channel to achieve the required bit rate [1,2,3]; optical packet switching (OPS) systems that use several parallel wavelengths for packet transmission [4,5]; future 400 Gb/s and 1 Tb/s transmission that may require 75-GHz and 150GHz channel spacing respectively [6,7]. A broad range of emerging applications with widely varied traffic and dynamic bandwidth demands have motivated the development of networks that support circuits and time-multiplex granularities in the optical domain [8,9,10]. Other more flexible arrangements [14] do not support gridless or elastic operation i.e. dynamic allocation of optical spectrum according to channel requirements
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