Experimental demonstration of layer-1 multicast for WDM networks using reconfigurable OADM

The feasibility of multicast-capable-reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer (MC-ROADM) based on broadcast-and-select switch is experimentally demonstrated. The MC-ROADM can support unicast connection as well as multicast connection, and can provide directionless switching and low insertion loss in path-through channel. We implement fully-reconfigurable multi-degree MC-ROADM based on wavelength selective switch, and evaluate multicasting performances by fully loading 40 × 10 Gbit/s wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) signals. For unicast and multicast operation, measured spectrum and bit-error-rate (BER) show good uniformity and no power penalty. After 1040 km transmission with 25 dB span loss, the measured BER is higher than forward-error-correction (FEC) limit for BER of 10−15.