Remote provisioning of a reconfigurable WDM multichannel add/drop multiplexer

Remote provisioning of a nonblocking reconfigurable multichannel wavelength-division-multiplexed add-drop multiplexer (ADM) is experimentally demonstrated. The ADM add/drop multiplexer supports many features required by the ITU optical channel layer including lightpath routing, signal conditioning and network/channel monitoring. Specifically, the node supports multichannel optical bypass and add/drop functions as well as optoelectronic 2R regeneration and channel drop-and-continue with wavelength translation. Provisioning of a slave node from a remote master node is achieved via a subcarrier encoded control channel. The control channel can set the full state of the ADM and demonstration of switching between two states is reported. A reconfiguration time of the order of 10 μs and BER below 10/sup -9/ are shown in both configurations. This performance meets the requirements of next-generation reconfigurable/restorable optical networks.