Broadcast and select OADM nodes application and performance trade-offs

Abstract

As data and Internet traffic continue to drive the need for higher bandwidth and longer connection distances, network designs must enable low cost transparency. Our results show that B&S OADMs achieve this goal, because they offer significantly reduced insertion loss for express channels, built-in spectral equalization capability, lower first-installed cost and an easy upgrade path. In the future, the broadcast and select concept likely will be expanded beyond OADMs to optical cross-connects interconnecting more than two fiber pairs and into other application spaces such as regional or metropolitan area networks. More specifically, we have shown that B&S architectures compete with parallel OADM approaches in ULH applications and that they offer cost and optical performance benefits over more conventional parallel OADM architectures. In terms of optical performance, the B&S architecture offers lower through loss and higher loss per add/drop channel comparedcompared to conventional 'demux-switch-mux' architectures.