Scalability analysis and demonstration of distributed multicarrier reusable network with optical add/drop multiplexers

We demonstrate a distributed multicarrier reusable network (DMRN) for regional and metro areas, based on dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) transmission with reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers (ROADMs). To eliminate the multiple distributed laser-diodes (LDs) at each access node in conventional ROADM networks, optical carriers generated by a centralized multicarrier light source (MCLS) are distributed to the access nodes, and they are used for node-to-node data transmission. The ROADM employed at each access node is used not only to “add” and “drop” data, but also to “drop” optical carriers. Moreover, to improve the wavelength utilization efficiency of the carriers distributed by the MCLS in the network, we proposed a technique called optical carrier regeneration (OCR), whereby the distributed carriers can be reused in each access node. This technique has a simple scheme and enables us to reuse the carriers that were already utilized for data transmission between prior source and destination nodes. In this work, we numerically analyze the scalability of our proposed DMRN in terms of the number of nodes, the span length, and the cascadability of the OCR. Moreover, we conduct a DMRN experiment using 10.7 Gb/s × 4 channels DWDM transmission and compare the transmission performances for various span lengths, for the first time. The results show that the DMRN will be useful for wide-area metro networks with high transmission performances.