Technologies and architectures for multiwavelength optical cross-connects

Wavelength-selective optical crossconnects are expected to be key enabling elements for multiwavelength optical networking. In designing such crossconnects, there are significant interactions and tradeoffs between the internal architectures of the cross-connects and the hardware technologies used to implement them. With some switch and multiplexer technologies, it is necessary to use dilated architectures, which increase the complexity of the cross-connect, in order to meet system requirements for crosstalk rejection. In cross-connects requiring wavelength translation, different internal architectures require different types of wavelength translation elements