Wavelength selective cross-connect with reduced complexity

Abstract

A wavelength division multiplex (WDM) cross-connect architecture that can selectively cross-connect, at a wavelength granularity, wavelength channels from any of a plurality of input WDM optical facilities (e.g., fibers) to any of a plurality of output WDM optical facilities. The architecture is based on multi-wavelength modules, which are capable of routing simultaneously N wavelengths. The number of required modules scales only with k or less (i.e., k modules with N complexity), where k is the number of input/output fibers. The significant reduction in complexity is traded for a decrease in blocking performance; one of the disclosed architectures is strictly non-blocking in the space domain and rearrangeably non-blocking in the wavelength domain, whereas two others are rearrangeably non-blocking in both the wavelength and space domain. Since the wavelength channels are optically multiplexed in the interconnection fibers, only a small number of optical amplifiers are needed to compensate for the inevitable transmission loss in the interconnection fabric.