Transparent ring-to-ring interconnection for metro core optical network

The deployment of reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers (ROADMs) is going to change the conventional architecture for metro networks. In this paper, we present detailed features for transparent ring-to-ring interconnection in optical domain by using planar lightwave circuit (PLC)-based ROADMs. The proposed ring-to-ring interconnection features will alleviate the use of costly optical-electrical-optical (O-E-O) regenerators and optical cross connects (OXCs) from the network. In order to characterize the PLC-based ROADM's performance in metro network environment, a testbed is designed and reported in this paper. In conjunction with the testbed, simulation models have been developed. Detailed test results obtained both from experiment and simulations demonstrate that our developed simulation models can be used for analyzing scenarios for next generation's metro optical network.