Design and implementation of a fully reconfigurable all-optical crossconnect for high capacity multiwavelength transport networks

The motivations and application framework for the introduction of all-optical wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) transmission and routing techniques in the transport network are presented. The requirements and functionalities of all-optical transparent routing nodes are discussed, and the physical architecture of a crossconnection node is proposed, to meet these requirements. Optical devices suitable for the node implementation are compared, and first demonstrations of crossconnection function at data rates up to 10 Gb/s are given. These results bring experimental evidence of the high potential of all-optical routing nodes for actual implementation of multiwavelength transport networks.