Multi-band OFDM transmission with sub-band optical switching

We show here that coherent dual-polarization multi-band OFDM (DP-MB-OFDM) is a good candidate for long-haul WDM transmission and sub-wavelength optical switching. We demonstrate that optical add-drop of OFDM sub-bands as narrow as 8 GHz inside a 100 Gbps DP-MB-OFDM signal constituted of four sub-bands spaced by 12 GHz is feasible in the middle of a 10×100-km DCF-free G.652 fibre line.