Design of flexible and reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer

We present a two-way hitless reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer (ROADM) and an Optical Cross Connect (OXC) structures based on microring resonators (MRRs). The OXC is simulated by the transfer matrix compound with Finite-Different Time-Domain method, and the results show that optical signals can be carried out to any destination in this structure. The two-way hitless ROADM is suit for two-way network and the OXC can be used as core node in mesh network. It is shown the port number can be reduced when use the structures presented as the node module in optical networks.

► Reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer (ROADM) and Optical Cross Connect (OXC) have been paid great attention in ROADM networks. Microring based ROADM and OXC have original attractive performances.
► A two-way hitless reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer (ROADM) and an Optical Cross 21 Connect (OXC) structures based on microring resonators (MRRs) are presented.
► The new ROADM and OXC can be used in two-way network and mesh network, respectively, in which the add/drop ports needed are smaller than those in traditional one-way network at large scale.