Demonstration of fast restorable all-optical WDM network

Abstract

We report on the demonstration of a fast restorable all-optical WDM network. This network consisted of four 4 x 4 optical cross-connects (OXC's) and four in-line optical amplifiers. These OXC's monitored not only the status of various network elements and quality of optical signals but also the optical path of each channel continuously. Thus, this network could automatically identify the causes of most network failures. For the fast restoration, we implemented these OXC's by using thermo-optic polymer switches (switching time: < 1.5 ms) and used hardware interrupt when LOS was detected. In addition, we used a pre-planned routing table made by using a simple heuristic routing and wavelength assignment algorithm. The results show that this network could be restored from any single link failure within 6 ms even when the restoration path was 400 km.