Experimental assessment of node cascadability in a reconfigurable survivable WDM ring network

Photonic networks will not only increase the overall capacity of the transport networks but also provide higher network flexibility in terms of routing capability reconfigurability, and protection. Following their commercial introduction, WDM point-to-point transmission systems will rapidly evolve to include wavelength add/drop, and, in the longer term, optical cross-connect functionalities. On the other hand, ring topology is especially attractive because of the efficient self-healing protection schemes that can be adopted. The implementation of WDM ring networks is therefore regarded as the first deployment phase of photonic networking.