ROADMs & Their System Applications

In less than a decade, the state of the art in fiber optic transport systems has progressed from simple point-to-point chains of optically amplified fiber spans to massive networks with hundreds of optically-amplified spans connecting transparent add-drop nodes spread over transcontinental distances. The primary driver for this transformation has been a remarkable improvement in cost, while its primary enabler has been the emergence of the Reconfigurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexer (ROADM) as a network element.