An all-optical grooming switch for interconnecting access and metro ring networks

A regenerative all-optical grooming switch for interconnecting 130 Gbit/s on-off keying (OOK) metro/core ring and 43 Gbit/s-OOK metro/access ring networks with switching functionality in time, space, and wavelength domains is demonstrated. Key functionalities of the switch are traffic aggregation with time-slot interchanging functionality, optical time division multiplexing (OTDM) to wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) demultiplexing, and multi-wavelength 2R regeneration. Laboratory and field demonstrations show the excellent performance of the new concept with error-free signal transmission and Q-factors above 20 dB.

Field experiments with a grooming switch for OTDM meshed networking

Field experiments of 42.7/128.1 Gb/s wavelength-division multiplexed, optical time-division multiplexed (WDM-OTDM) transmultiplexing and all-optical dual-wavelength regeneration at the OTDM rate are presented in this paper. By using the asynchronous retiming scheme, we achieve error-free bufferless data grooming with time-slot interchange capability for OTDM meshed networking. We demonstrate excellent performance from the system, discuss scalability, applicability, and the potential reach of the asynchronous retiming scheme for transparent OTDM-domain interconnection.