A coherent photonic wavelength-division switching system for broad-band networks

A coherent photonic wavelength-division (WD) switching system, utilizing a coherent wavelength switch ( lambda switch), is proposed. In the proposed coherent lambda switch, the tunable wavelength filter function is accomplished using coherent optical detection with a wavelength tunable local oscillator. The coherent photonic WD switching system has the following features; (1) low crosstalk switching for dense WDM signal, and (2) large line capacity capability. Design considerations show that 32 wavelength division channels can be available with a coherent lambda switch. It is also shown that a broadband metropolitan-area-network with over 1000 line capacity is possible, using a multistage connection in the coherent lambda switches. The switching function of the coherent lambda switch is demonstrated in a two-channel wavelength-synchronized switching experiment, using 8-GHz-spaced, 280-Mb/s optical FSK signals. >