Performance of WDM ring and bus networks in the presence of homodyne crosstalk

This paper examines the effects of coherent and incoherent homodyne crosstalk in wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) ring and bus networks using reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexers (OADM's). It is widely understood that incoherent homodyne crosstalk causes power penalties at the receivers in these networks. We show that coherent homodyne crosstalk causes a range of possible received powers, and that coherent and incoherent crosstalk together lead to a range of possible power penalties. A Monte Carlo simulation is used to examine the probability distribution of power penalties due to homodyne crosstalk under various conditions. We find that increasing the switch and multiplexer crosstalk within each OADM, and increasing the number of WDM channels, all produce increased probabilities of large power penalties. However, the number of nodes through which a signal is transmitted does not affect the power penalty distribution.