Optical cross-connect system incorporated with newly developedoperation and management system

摘要

The optical cross-connect (OXC) system described in this papernincreases the operation flexibility and reliability of the trunk-linenoptical networks used for data communication. It features an OXC nodencomprised of a photonic switching network and a conventional electricnswitching network that are connected hierarchically. The operation andnmanagement scheme proposed for this OXC system uses the concept of annoptical path and an optical section. The OXC system allows hitlessnnetwork reconfiguration by switching the photonic switches gradually andnwithout interference effects. An experimental OXC network showed that anbroken optical path is restored, by rerouting, within 50 ms. Experimentsnusing a LiNbO3 8×8 photonic switch matrix also showednthat the OXC system provides photonic hitless switching. These resultsnconfirm the feasibility of flexibly reconfigurable and fast-restorablenOXC systems