The Asymmetrical Architecture of New Optical Switch Device

Abstract

The most optical devices today are built by symmetrical architecture. Thus, they can perform bi- directionally with the same junction to both side of incoming signal. But, in this project, we introduced a new optical switching device which has an asymmetrical architecture and can perform bi- directionally junction as the previous. Additionally many junctions are also embedded in this architecture. The device named is Optical Cross Add and Drop Multiplexer (OXADM). The asymmetrical architecture oj OXADM consists oj 3 parts; selective port, add/drop operation, and path routing. Selective port permits only the interest wavelength pass through and acts as a filter. While add and drop function can be implemented in second part of OXADM architecture. The signals can then be re-routed to any port of output or/and perform an accumulation function which multiplex all signals onto one path and then exit to any interest output port. This will be done by the third part. The 'accumulation' is the most interesting jeatures and differentiates the OXADM with other previous device such as ROADM, OADM and OXC. We demonstrate fiber-to-fiber low crosstalk (60 dB ON/OFF ratio) and low return loss (40 dB ON/OFF ratio) of 2times2 OXADM optical switch with detail experimental set up explanation. More comprehensive, the existing switches (e.g directional coupler and OXC) and OXADM switch are compared. Finally, the OSNR measurement oj OXADM associated with every junction is also discussed.