A DWDM/SCM self-healing architecture for broad-band subscriber networks

A high-capacity dense wavelength-division multiplexing/subcarrier multiplexing (DWDM/SCM) network based on a self-healing star-bus-ring architecture (SBRA) is proposed and demonstrated. This architecture has a star subnet on the upper level to be a high-capacity infrastructure for the network, several bus subnets on the middle level to offer broad-band channels for multiwavelength signals, and many ring subnets on the lower level to serve a number of nodes. We design remote nodes and bidirectional wavelength add-drop multiplexers (WADMs) by using simple optical switches to reconfigure the network under link failure. We further employ M-quadrature amplitude modulation (M-QAM) and frequency shift-keyed (FSK) signals for downstream and upstream channels, respectively. The SBRA ensures an optical-beat-interference-free (OBI-free) and high-reliability optical network. Finally, we set up an experimental network to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed architecture.