Bidirectional optical cross connects for multiwavelength ring networks using single arrayed waveguide grating router

Bidirectional optical cross connects (BOXCs) using a single arrayed waveguide grating router and tunable fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) have been proposed for multiwavelength bidirectional WDM ring networks. Two types of structures in fold-back and loop-back configurations have been considered and their feasibility has been demonstrated experimentally. The performances of two proposed structures have been investigated and compared in terms of crosstalk characteristics and backscattering suppression capability. The performance of the fold-back configuration is less vulnerable to the crosstalk of the arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) router. On the contrary, the BOXCs in loop-back configuration suppress backscattered signals effectively without using optical bandpass filters and, thus, have good scalability and are more cost effective. Therefore, the choice between two structures will depend on the crosstalk requirement in the BOXCs and the characteristics of the AWG router. In transmission of 2.5-Gb/s signals, the power penalty of 0.5 dB has been observed at BER of 10^-9 in both structures. Expansion of the proposed 2×2 structure to N × N adopting multistage structure has been discussed. The limitation on the maximum scale due to spectral bandwidth narrowing has been considered