Photonics Integrated Multiband WSS Based ROADM Architecture: A Networking Analysis

The modern idea of connectivity and the progress in bandwidth-intensive applications requires expanding the Internet's capacity. The technologies like spatial-division multiplexing (SDM) and band-division multiplexing (BDM) have emerged as viable options for boosting the capacity of existing wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) optical systems in the C-band and accommodating growing traffic requirements. This paper proposes a network-level analysis of novel modular photonic integrated multiband wavelength selective switch (WSS) architecture (operate on S+C+L bands) for a reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer (ROADM) operation. The networking analysis of the proposed WSS switching fabric is performed on the USA network for the SDM and BDM scenarios. The assessment is based on the channel allocation of the fiber in both the SDM and BDM cases. Promising results are achieved, showing that the proposed WSS has the capability to fully utilize the potentiality of the cost-effective BDM approach and enhance the network capacity without installing new fiber infrastructure as compared to the SDM solution, which requires the deployment of additional fiber for capacity augmentation.