Experimental demonstration of function programmable add/drop architecture for ROADMs [Invited]

The dramatic growth of Internet traffic is posing unprecedented challenges in all network segments. Moreover, its increasing heterogeneity is driving research trends in network functions virtualization and software-defined networking (SDN) to guarantee high levels of reconfigurability, adaptability, and flexibility. Therefore, hardware infrastructures must be capable of playing different roles according to service and traffic requirements. In this context, reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers (ROADMs) are key elements since they route signals directly in the optical domain. Thus, it is crucial to design ROADMs with easy maintenance, a low manual intervention rate, and high reconfigurability, flexibility, and adaptability. In this work, we experimentally demonstrate our recently proposed add/drop on demand (ADoD) architecture for ROADMs in a SDN metropolitan mesh optical network test-bed with 80 dual-polarization quadrature phase-shift-keying channels at 128 Gb/s. In addition, we extend our quantitative measurement of flexibility considering the system´s entropy, showing that ADoD provides higher flexibility and lower loss than current proposals.