Hardware scale and performance evaluation of a compact subsystem modular optical cross connect that adopts tailored add/drop architecture

We propose novel highly scalable subsystem modular optical cross connect (OXC) architectures that use an efficient add/drop part to connect each transponder bank to a limited number of incoming/outgoing fibers. We investigate the performance and hardware scale of the proposed architectures in two add/drop configurations. Numerical evaluations prove that the proposed architectures attain almost the same routing performance as the equivalent conventional single large-scale OXC with an ideal colorless, directionless, and contentionless add/drop part, while enabling substantial hardware scale reduction.