Performance of Dynamic Optical Path Networks with Large-scale WBSS-based Optical Cross-connects

In this paper, we have proposed a generalized large-scale optical cross-connect (OXC) architecture utilizing waveband selective switches (WBSS) for realizing future cost-effective, bandwidth-abundant and flexible optical networks. The developed architecture implements multiple WBSSs for each incoming fiber and small size wavelength selective switches (WSSs) for dropping optical paths while simply deploying 1´2 WSSs or 1´2 optical couplers for realizing the adding function. Thanks to the use of WBSSs, which are more cost-effective and simpler devices, the developed architecture enables a significant hardware scale reduction. The WBSS-based OXC, however, suffers from a limited routing capability, which relies on the inner node parameter (i.e., the WBSS number per input fiber) and the waveband granularity of WBSSs. We, therefore, evaluate the hardware scale requirement of our developed architecture in comparison with that of conventional WSS-based OXC. It is verified that a substantial hardware scale reduction can be achieved by using the proposed architecture, especially for high port count OXCs or when applying coarser granular WBSSs. Moreover, we also assess the performance of dynamic optical networks based on the proposed OXC. Numerical simulations show that the network offers a substantial necessary hardware scale reduction at the cost of a small performance offset comparing to that of the network using conventional WSS-based OXC.