We propose a cyclic sleep control technique for backup resources in reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer (ROADM) systems to simultaneously achieve power savings and high-speed recovery from failures. Processes to check the reliability of backup resources, backup transponders and paths, are also provided in the control technique. The proposed technique uses sleep mode where backup transponders are powered down to minimize power for power savings. At least one of the backup transponders is always activated after self-checking using the loopback fiber connection in the ROADM and it becomes a shared backup for working transponders to enable high-speed recovery from failures. This activated backup transponder is powered down again after the next transponder is activated. These state transitions are cyclically applied to each backup transponder. This “cyclic” aspect of operation enables network operators to continuously monitor the reliability for all backup resources with the sleep mode. The activated backup transponders at both ends of the path are used in checking the reliability of backup paths. Therefore, all backup resources, both transponders and paths, can be regularly checked with the sleep mode to ensure data are stably forwarded. We estimated the power consumption with this technique under various conditions and found a trade-off between power reduction and the recovery capabilities from failures. We achieved more than 34% power saving of backup transponders maintaining the failure recovery time within 50ms in experiments. Furthermore, we confirmed the reliability of backup paths in experiments using backup transponders with the cyclic sleep control technique. These results indicated that the proposed control technique is promising in dramatically and reliably reducing the power consumption of backup resources.

This paper presents a fast and large-scale optical circuit-switch architecture for intra-datacenter applications that uses a combination of space switches and wavelength-routing switches are utilized. A 1,440 × 1,440 optical switch is designed with a fast-tunable laser, 8×8 delivery-and-coupling switch, and a 180×180 wavelength-routing switch. We test the bit-error-ratio characteristics of all ports of the wavelength-routing switch using 180-wavelength 10-Gbps signals in the full C-band. The worst switching time, 498 microseconds, is confirmed and all bit-error ratios are acceptable.

Research and development of a multi-degree colorless, directionless and contentionless reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer (CDC-ROADM) has recently been attracting a lot of attention. A large-scale transponder aggregator (TPA) is indispensable for providing high-capacity flexible connections to optical networks. In this paper, we report our study of the requirements for the TPA, which is a key technology for achieving flexible optical networks. To meet the requirements, we have developed an 848 TPA prototype based on Si photonics technology. This prototype was made with a few 88 Si optical switches and designed to be used with a commercial ROADM system. The 88 Si optical switches are made by integrating 152 Mach Zehnder (MZ) Thermo Optoelectronic (TO) 22 optical switch elements. A double gate structure is introduced to achieve the high extinction ratio (ER) required for optical communication. To the best of our knowledge, this is the world's first Si-TPA that can be used with a commercial ROADM system. By evaluating the basic optical characteristics utilizing real-time 100 Gbps digital coherent detection as one of today's practical technologies and a 4.4 THz spectral bandwidth 20 Tbps super-channel with digital coherent detection, as a promising future technology, we have confirmed that our prototype Si-TPA has the potential for practical use and future extensibility.

We propose a compact matrix-switch-based hierarchical optical cross-connect (HOXC) architecture that effectively handles the colorless waveband add/drop ratio restriction so as to realize switch scale reduction. In order to implement the colorless waveband add/drop function, we develop a wavelength MUX/DMUX that can be commonly used by different wavebands. We prove that the switch scale of the proposed HOXC is much smaller than that of conventional single-layer optical cross-connects (OXCs) and a typical HOXC. Furthermore, we introduce a prototype system based on the proposed architecture that utilizes integrated novel wavelength MUXs/DMUXs. Transmission experiments prove its technical feasibility.