WDM Cross-Connect Architectures with Reduced Complexity

We propose three new optical cross-connect architectures based on multi wavelength modules, which are capable of routing simultaneously N wavelengths. The architectures have a significantly reduced complexity and cost, which is traded for an increased wavelength blocking; one of the proposed architectures is strictly non-blocking in the space domain and rearrangeably non-blocking in the wavelength domain, whereas the two others are rearrangeably non-blocking in both the wavelength and space domain. It can, however, be shown that only a small number of connections have to be rearranged to unblock a demand. Another very important advantage of the three proposed architectures is their utilization of amplifiers. Since the wavelength channels are optically multiplexed in the interconnection fibers, only a small number of optical amplifiers are needed to compensate for the inevitable loss in the interconnection fabric.