SOA Based Photonic Integrated WDM Cross-Connects for Optical Metro-Access Networks

Abstract

We present a novel optical metro node architecture that exploits the Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) optical cross-connect nodes for interconnecting network elements, as well as computing and storage resources. The photonic WDM cross-connect node based on semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA) allows switching data signals in wavelength, space, and time for fully exploiting statistical multiplexing. The advantages of using an SOA to realize the WDM cross-connect switch in terms of transparency, switching speed, photonic integrated amplification for loss-less operation, and gain equalization are verified experimentally. The experimental assessment of a 4 × 4 photonic integrated WDM cross-connect confirmed the capability of the cross-connect chip to switch the WDM signal in space and wavelength. Experimental results show lossless operation, low cross-talk <−30 dB, and dynamically switch within few nanoseconds. Moreover, the operation of the cross-connect switch with multiple WDM channels and diverse modulation formats is also investigated and reported. Error-free operation with less than a 2 dB power penalty for a single channel, as well as WDM input operation, has been measured for multiple 10/20/40 Gb/s NRZ-OOK, 20 Gb/s PAM4, and data-rate adaptive DMT traffic. Compensation of the losses indicates that the modular architecture could scale to a larger number of ports.