A coherent photonic wavelength-division switching system for broad-band networks

A coherent photonic wavelength-division (WD) switching system, utilizing a coherent wavelength switch (λ switch), is proposed. In the proposed coherent λ switch, the tunable wavelength filter function is accomplished using coherent optical detection with a wavelength tunable local oscillator. The coherent photonic WD switching system has the following features; (1) low crosstalk switching for dense WDM signal, and (2) large line capacity capability. Design considerations show that 32 wavelength division channels can be available with a coherent λ switch. It is also shown that a broadband metropolitan-area-network with over 1000 line capacity is possible, using a multistage connection in the coherent λ switches. The switching function of the coherent λ switch is demonstrated in a two-channel wavelength-synchronized switching experiment, using 8-GHz-spaced, 280-Mb/s optical FSK signals