Routing and Optical Multiplexing of 10-Gb/s OOK Streams to (DP)-DQPSK Traffic Trunks

Two cost-effective implementations of optical multiplexing architecture are demonstrated. A number of 10-Gb/s on/off-keying tributaries are multiplexed into a 20- or 40-Gb/s (dual polarization) differential quadrature phase shift keying and optically demultiplexed to enable effective spectrum utilization without introducing electronic data processing. A new routing strategy is also proposed to specifically account for the constraints and features of the architecture, significantly reducing the overall blocking probability.