Towards Extending Switching Capabilities in Future Optical Networks

The substantial increase of global data traffic in recent years, driven primarily by the advent of innovative applications and services, is expected to persist and significantly influence the development and implementation of next-generation optical networks. In particular, new flexible and scalable switching architectures capable to support the increasing demand for higher capacities will be envisioned. On this regard, extending current switching capabilities towards including the exploitation of spectral and spatial degrees of freedom will be a suitable option to meet the expected traffic increase and capacity needs. Specifically, new transmission bands, beyond the C-band, and different spatial channels such as fiber cores/modes or even bundles of fibers will enable to provide the expected capacity scaling enhancing the available network resources. Multiband (MB) and spatial division multiplexing (SDM) technologies arise as key technologies to exploit the full potential of the network in terms of rate/bandwidth, flexibility and efficiency. Hence, an innovative MBoSDM switching prototype is here presented and experimentally validated as a possible key solution to be adopted in future optical networks. The main capabilities/features and programmable elements of the proposed node approach are also analyzed.