20 J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW. / VOL. 2, NO. 1 / JANUARY 2010
Optical Signal Channel Power Stability
in a Transparent Optical Network
Using Large-Scale Photonic
Cross Connects and Automatic Gain
Control EDFAs
Makoto Murakami, Takeshi Seki, and Kazuhiro Oda
Abstract—We discuss the change in the number of
optical signal channels transmitted through wave-
length division multiplexing links in a transparent
optical network and report detailed measurement re-
sults of optical signal channel power variation in an
experimental setup configured with realistic large-
scale photonic cross-connect (PXC) switches fabri-
cated using three-dimensional microelectromechani-
cal system (3D MEMS) technology. The scale of the
PXC-based network ranges from 100 to 300 km to
simulate a realistic long-haul optical network using
100-km-long dispersion-shifted fibers and L-band
erbium-doped fiber amplifiers with a high-speed auto-
matic gain control circuit. The measurement results
demonstrate the feasibility of stable operation of a
transparent optical network by using these state-of-
the-art technologies with proper parameter settings.
Index Terms—Optical communication; Optical fiber
amplifiers; Optical switches; Photonic switching sys-
tems.
I. INTRODUCTION
N ext-generation optical networks are expected to
offer large-capacity traffic flexibly to any destina-
tion at any time. Such networks will be constructed
using an optical network with photonic cross connects
(PXCs) in addition to current wavelength division
multiplexing (WDM) transmission systems to build a
mesh configuration [1]. The PXC equipment used in
such networks should have a large number of input–
Manuscript received June 11, 2009; revised November 4, 2009; ac-
cepted November 23, 2009; published December 24, 2009 共Doc. ID
112631兲.
Makoto Murakami (e-mail: murakami.makoto@lab.ntt.co.jp),
Takeshi Seki, and Kazuhiro Oda are with NTT Network Service
Systems Laboratories, NTT Corporation, 3-9-11, Micoricho,
Musashino-shi, Tokyo, 180-8585 Japan.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1364/JOCN.2.000020
1943-0620/10/010020-8/$15.00
Murakami et al.
output ports, more than 100, to accommodate signifi-
cantly increasing capacities for a growing number of
broadband traffic users in the future. Using optical
switches based on three-dimensional microelectrome-
chanical systems (3D MEMS) is one of the most prom-
ising ways of achieving such a large-capacity PXC be-
cause of its fundamental advantages over
conventional 2 ⫻ 2 optical switch integration. These
switches include strictly nonblocking connection and
lower optical insertion loss, less wavelength depen-
dency, and less dependence of insertion loss and the
number of switch elements on the increase in the
number of ports, all of which owe to the intrinsic ad-
vantage of free-space optics [2–5].
Optically transparent networks require frequent
changes in the number of signal channels in WDM
transmission lines that connect PXCs for optical
wavelength path creation, deletion, and route change
for service protection. Such change in signal channel
number may cause a transient response of optical am-
plifiers and undesirable fluctuation of the optical
power in the WDM lines [6–8]. Then the surviving sig-
nal channels transmitted in the WDM lines may be
temporarily degraded because an increase in signal
power triggers fiber-nonlinearity-induced impair-
ments, while a decrease in signal power causes signal-
to-noise ratio degradation. Although the transient du-
ration is usually much shorter than the period
between switching events or system operation, the
quality of transmission could be constrained by such
temporal signal degradation. This is because the bit
rate of the signal channels in future networks are ex-
pected to be higher than 10 Gb/ s and even as much as
100 Gb/ s, and the use of a strong forward error cor-
rection technique makes the systems’ bit error rate
highly sensitive to the change in signal power level in
the WDM line. In particular, the impact may be criti-
cal when the system is operated near the end of its
© 2010 Optical Society of America
Murakami et al.
lifetime and the system’s margin decreases to the
limit. Thus, the transient response of optical amplifi-
ers used in WDM transmission lines is problematic in
transparent optical networks, which inevitably in-
clude optical switching devices in the PXC nodes.
Therefore, there have been reported discussions on
such transient power fluctuations in optical transpar-
ent networks, some of which were obtained through
numerical or experimental simulation [9–11].
Careful management of both optical amplifier tran-
sient responses and PXC switching characteristics is a
critical issue in achieving actual optical transparent
networks. We report experimental evaluations of tran-
sient signal power fluctuations in a realistic optical
transparent network, which uses the most promising
state-of-the-art technologies for deploying real-world
networks that are large-scale PXCs based on 3D
MEMS technology, WDM transmission lines including
dispersion-shifted fibers (DSFs), i.e., G.653 fibers, and
engineered L-band erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (ED-
FAs) with a high-speed automatic gain control (AGC),
which is an essential technique for reducing transient
optical power fluctuations in WDM lines. Although
L-band WDM systems are expected to actualize WDM
signal transmission in DSFs, few results on transient
responses in L-band EDFAs or systems have been re-
ported [12,13]. Thus, our results obtained in such a
transparent optical network running in the L-band re-
gion may be the first of its kind.
First, we discuss the change of status in optical sig-
nal channels loaded in a WDM line, which composes
an optical transparent network. Then, we show our
experimental setup including specifications of the
components and evaluations of transient responses of
the WDM lines used against varying switching
speeds. Finally, we report detailed measurement re-
sults of the optical signal channel power stability
when switching occurs at the PXC nodes for various
combinations of signal channels in the optical net-
work.
II. CHANGE OF SIGNAL CHANNELS IN A PXC-BASED
OPTICAL NETWORK
There are various possible patterns in the addition
or removal of signal channels in a transparent optical
network where any signal channel can enter and exit
at any node. When a wavelength path is created be-
tween an ingress and egress node pair in a network, a
signal channel is used to connect the nodes through
the WDM lines. In Fig. 1, for example, a signal chan-
nel (solid line) passes through the WDM lines to cre-
ate a wavelength path between PXC nodes A and D,
while an add/drop signal channel is loaded between
PXC nodes A and C and another between nodes B and
D.
VOL. 2, NO. 1 / JANUARY 2010 / J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW. 21
Fig. 1. PXC node and WDM line concatenation as part of optical
transparent network.
If, in general, the number of nodes the signal chan-
nel passes through is N, the possible number of com-
binations of nodes between which add/drop signal
channels can enter or exit, NCN is calculated by
N−1
NCN = 兺 共N − k兲 = N共N − 1兲/2.
k=1
共1兲
Thus, such a number of patterns has to be consid-
ered for each add/drop signal channel in the WDM
lines depending on the event of wavelength path cre-
ation, deletion, or route change.
If the allowable maximum number of wavelengths
in the WDM lines is M, any number of combinations of
surviving and add/drop signal channels has to be flex-
ibly loaded in the WDM line. Then, the possible num-
ber of combinations NCW is calculated by
M
M!
NCW = 兺 = 2M − 1. 共2兲
l=1 共M − l兲!l!
For each combination of surviving and add/drop
channels in Eq. (2), there are longitudinal combina-
tions of ingress and egress nodes expressed by Eq. (1).
As a result, we can determine the possible number of
cases for signal channel add/drop by using Eqs. (1)
and (2). It should be noted that Eq. (2) generates quite
a large number even for a typical WDM line. For ex-
ample, NCW equals 65,535 for M = 16 and is of the or-
der of 1012 for M = 40. This means that we will need an
unrealistically large number of measurements to ex-
haustively cover all the possible add/drop cases.
Therefore, we should reduce the requisite number of
measurements to a level that is realistic and satisfac-
tory for actual situations. In terms of NCN, the stron-
gest interaction between the channels may occur in
which all the signal channels propagate in the same
series of WDM lines, i.e., enter in and exit from the
same ingress and egress node pair. We then may re-
duce NCN to 1. In terms of NCW, the largest fluctuation
may arise when the maximum number of channels is
loaded in the WDM lines and only one signal channel
survives, while all the other channels are added or
dropped.
The wavelength position of the surviving channel
for measurement has to be determined by considering
the wavelength dependence of the WDM lines, as
shown in Fig. 2, as an example of signal channel allo-
cation in a WDM line. The optical amplifiers, in gen-
22 J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW. / VOL. 2, NO. 1 / JANUARY 2010
optical
power
surviving add/drop
channel channels
local dispersion
optical amplifier gain band
Fig. 2. Signal channel allocation in the WDM line.
eral, have an inhomogeneous response to the input
signal wavelength because of inhomogeneous satura-
tion or spectral hole burning, which causes imbalance
in the optical power level between the signal channels
[6]. Therefore, the surviving signal channel should be
allocated at the wavelength positions so as to strongly
reflect the optical amplifiers’ gain characteristics, for
example, at the shortest and longest wavelengths.
Optical fibers exhibit chromatic dispersion and the
amount of dispersion accumulation along the fibers
depends on the signal wavelength allocation because
of the existence of the dispersion slope (see Fig. 2).
Moreover, dispersion compensators are usually used
in WDM lines to repeatedly offset dispersion accumu-
lation along the fibers. Thus, we have to consider local
fiber dispersion and overall average dispersion after
compensation. The signal may be affected by maxi-
mum or minimum local dispersion at the shortest or
longest wavelength position in the WDM signal band,
while minimum overall dispersion may be set near the
center of the signal channels, as shown in Fig. 2.
Summarizing the above discussions on both the op-
tical amplifier and fiber dispersion characteristics in
WDM lines, we may conclude that the shortest and
longest wavelength channels should be basically mea-
sured as the most severely affected signal channels
among all signal channels
III. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP OF A PXC-BASED OPTICAL
NETWORK
The experimental setup for investigating the char-
acteristics of a PXC-based optical transparent net-
work is shown in Fig. 3. It basically consisted of four
PXC nodes linked by 100-km-long WDM lines. The
scale of the optical network ranged up to 300 km to
simulate a realistic long-haul network. Each PXC
node consisted of a 144⫻ 144 port large-scale matrix
switch based on 3D MEMS technology and optical
multiplexers and demultiplexers based on arrayed
waveguide grating (AWG) technology. The optical in-
Murakami et al.
optical power
(10 dB/div)
WDM light 1575 1585 1595 1605
source
wavelength (nm) 100 km
DCF
DSF
A B
overall dispersion
(with dispersion
compensator)
wavelength
oscillo-
surviving
channel scope
C D optical
spectrum
analyzer
switched
channels
Fig. 3. Experimental setup.
sertion loss of the switch was around 3 dB and that of
the AWG multiplexer was around 5 dB. Thirty-two la-
ser light sources were used as WDM signal channels
and fed into PXC node A. The wavelength of the signal
channels ranged from 1579.5 to 1605.7 nm with
100 GHz spacing in the L-band region. The optical
power level differences between the signal channels
were adjusted within 1 dB, as shown in the inset in
Fig. 3. The WDM signal power was set for each chan-
nel power to nominally become 0 dBm at the input of
the DSF.
The WDM transmission lines consisted of EDFAs
with AGC and 100-km-long DSFs followed by disper-
sion compensation fibers (DCFs) with a dispersion
value of −200 ps/ nm. Two EDFAs were used in each
WDM line section to compensate for the loss of both
the DSF and the PXC node. The configuration of the
EDFA is shown in Fig. 4(a). It contained two sub-
EDFAs, each of which was counterdirectionally
pumped by a 1480 nm laser, and its input and output
were monitored. A variable optical attenuator (VOA)
was placed between the sub-EDFAs to adjust the over-
all gain and gain-band flatness. The total loss at the
midstage between the sub-EDFA was determined with
the VOA and the DCF that was inserted when com-
pensating for the accumulated dispersion of the
100 km transmission fiber. AGC was operated under
proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control and
achieved by adjusting the pump laser power according
to the optical signal input power change detected at
each photodetector placed before and after the sub-
EDFAs. The setting parameters of the EDFA, includ-
ing the gain allocation between the sub-EDFAs, can be
controlled, and alarms are detected and status infor-
mation is collected by the remote terminal with a
simple network management protocol (SNMP) man-
ager. Figure 4(b) shows a typical gain profile of the
EDFA that achieved a flat gain with variations within
1 dB over the signal wavelength range.
Murakami et al. VOL. 2, NO. 1 / JANUARY 2010 / J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW. 23

level shift after switching should be considered be-

Fig. 4. Configuration and characteristics of an L-band EDFA with
AGC.
IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
In this section, we first evaluate the characteristics
of the elements involved in the PXC network and then
measure the response of the network for various
switching cases.
A. Transient Response Behavior of Cascaded WDM
Links
The transient response of an optical amplifier has
been widely focused on as a significant issue in optical
transmission technologies. Therefore, detailed param-
eters for describing such a phenomenon have been de-
fined in standardization, such as ITU-T G.661, as
shown in Fig. 5 [14].
The optical amplifier may exhibit power excursion
or over/undershoot at its output when some signal
channels are dropped from or added to the total input
WDM signal channels. In addition to these param-
eters for transient power change, the static power-
optical power excursion
power (overshoot)
surviving power level shift
channel
power excursion
cause the incomplete flatness of the EDFA gain
characteristics generates differences in the shared
power of each signal channel among the total WDM
signals, while the AGC usually acts by detecting just
the total optical power. Moreover, the EDFA gain char-
acteristics may slightly change depending on the in-
put power levels.
We evaluated the transient response of cascaded
WDM lines in an optical transparent network using
the experimental configuration shown in Fig. 6. The
input and output of the optical network are respec-
tively an input port of PXC node A and an output port
of any PXC node B, C, or D in Fig. 3. Since the switch-
ing characteristics of the PXC cannot be easily
changed over a wide range, we used an optical modu-
lator based on acousto-optic deflection to measure the
response of the transparent optical network to various
signal channel add/drop switching speeds. The wave-
form generator fed the switching waveform with vary-
ing rising/falling times into the optical modulator. The
optical input to the optical network generated by the
optical modulator smoothly changed as indicated in
the inset of Fig. 6, and the rising and falling times (de-
fined as the duration between the 10% and 90% opti-
cal power points) of the switching varied freely. The
temporal signal power change of one signal channel
was measured using an oscilloscope after optical de-
multipexing at the output side of the optical network
when all other 31 channels were dropped or added as
the most severe case. Each measurement was per-
formed with an interval of more than a few seconds,
which is enough for the system to be stable.
Figures 7(a) and 7(b) show the power excursions of
the surviving channel measured against the switching
time when all other channels are dropped or added,
respectively. In both figures, the power excursion was
not so significant when measured at a switching (ris-
ing or falling) time with longer than 0.2 ms at one
waveform
generator
light source optical optical oscillo-
add/dropped modulator network scope
light source
measured
1.5 1.5
rising falling
power (arb. unit)
power (arb. unit)

(undershoot)
add/drop 1.0 1.0
channels
0.5 0.5

time 0.0 0.0

time (ms/div) time (ms/div)
Fig. 5. Definition of parameters for measurement of optical tran-
sient response. Fig. 6. Measurement setup for optical transient response.
24 J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW. / VOL. 2, NO. 1 / JANUARY 2010 Murakami et al.

10.0 signal channel power stable during optical switching

1EDFA
power excursion (dB)
if the switching speed is moderate according to the
8.0 above results.
6EDFAs (300km)
6.0
B. Switching Characteristics of PXC
4.0 Power excursion
We measured the switching characteristics of the
2.0 PXC used in our experimental network. The rising
and falling switching characteristics are shown in
0.0 Figs. 8(a) and 8(b). The rising switching waveform
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 showed slightly rough fluctuations during switching
and for a while even after switching on. This is caused
time (ms)
by a MEMS mirror motion control during switching in
(a) when other channels are dropped which two MEMS mirrors are tilted to attain their
best positions to maximize optical power coupled to
0.0 the output port. Such a complicated control technique
power excursion (dB)

is essential in a matrix switch, which connects a large

-2.0 number of combinations of input–output port pairs
-4.0 with quite a low insertion loss, unlike a simple 1 ⫻ 2
type or on–off switch, which just selects one of two
-6.0 ports. The fluctuations period of about 1 kHz reflects
1EDFA the inherent MEMS mirror mechanical vibration fre-
-8.0 quency determined by the MEMS mirror design pa-
6EDFAs (300km)
rameters, including the applied electrostatic force and
-10.0
the strength of spring torsion that adjust the mirror
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
angle. These small fluctuations, however, dampened
time (ms) and converged on a constant power level in several
(a) when other channels are added
milliseconds, as shown in Fig. 8(a), and they may have
no impact on actual system operation, as the optical
Fig. 7. Power excursion of surviving channel. power is promptly stabilized.
The rising and falling times in Figs. 8(a) and 8(b)
were about 0.7 and 0.6 ms, respectively. From the re-
EDFA output. In contrast, the power excursion started sults in Fig. 7, we found that these PXC switching
to increase when the switching time increased within
a range of less than 0.2 ms. The power reached 1.6 dB
for dropping and 0.9 dB for adding at a switching time
of 0.01 ms. The power excursion further increased as
transmission distance increased to 300 km. The maxi-
mum value for dropping was 7.2 dB and that for add-
ing was 2.9 dB at a switching time of 0.01 ms. The in-
tensive power excursions observed at switching times
of less than 0.1 ms could be further suppressed by ma-
nipulating the response of the AGC circuit or EDF
characteristics [6]. However, quickening the response
of the AGC circuit could risk unstable operation of
EDFAs when they are used in actual systems where
there may be various kinds of disturbances. Moreover,
too fast a response to optical input power change may
interrupt the lower frequency component of intensity-
modulated signals with random patterns and possibly
cause signal degradation.
We should note that the AGC in EDFAs sufficiently
suppressed power excursion when the switching time
slowed to 0.5 ms or more even after 300 km transmis-
sion. Only a small power excursion was observed for
dropping, and there was no tangible power excursion
for adding at 0.5 ms. Thus, we can keep the optical Fig. 8. Switching waveform of PXC.
Murakami et al.
characteristics would not cause any significant power
excursion of optical signal channels transiting in the
WDM lines in our experimental setup.
C. Optical Signal Power Stability in a PXC Network
We routed one signal channel from PXC node A to C
while other channels were routed from PXC node A to
D through B and C in the experimental setup in Fig.
3. The stability of the optical signal channel power
was measured for one or several surviving signal
channels transiting the route A–B–C–D, while other
channels were dropped and added by changing their
route from A–B–C–D to A–C.
The measured temporal optical power changes of
one surviving signal channel after a 300 km transmis-
sion, when all other channels were dropped, are
shown in Fig. 9. The surviving signal channel was lo-
cated at the shortest wavelength in Fig. 9(a) and the
longest wavelength in Fig. 9(b) in the WDM signal
channels in the severe cases mentioned above. We
found that the surviving signal channel power
smoothly changed with no significant power excursion
or fluctuation due to EDFA transient responses at the
leading edge of the waveform for both adding and
dropping. These results agree with the above discus-
sions in Subsections IV.A and IV.B in that the switch-
ing waveform of the PXC used was moderate enough
to prevent any dynamic power excursion in the WDM
lines. We also noted that the small fluctuations after
the power increase in the PXC switching waveform,
Fig. 9. Optical power change of surviving channel for an add/drop
ratio of 15 dB.
VOL. 2, NO. 1 / JANUARY 2010 / J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW. 25
due to MEMS mirror motion control, were suppressed
after passing through the EDFAs with AGC.
The change in the static signal power recorded an
increase of 1.6 dB when the shortest wavelength
channel survived and 0.4 dB when the longest sur-
vived. Such static power change could be caused by in-
complete flatness of the EDFA gain characteristics,
and the larger power-level shift observed in the short-
est wavelength may be due to the change in the oper-
ating condition of the EDFAs, which enhanced the
gain for the shorter wavelength region as the total op-
tical input power decreased.
We have measured the optical signal power changes
for other typical channel adding/dropping cases by
changing the wavelength allocation of the surviving
channel and the number of add/drop channels. Figure
10(a) shows the results from one surviving signal
channel measured (15 dB add/drop ratio) after 100,
200, and 300 km transmissions when its wavelength
was located at the shortest, middle, or longest posi-
tion. The signal channel was measured at the output
of the PXC node B and C for the transmission dis-
Fig. 10. Optical power level change of surviving channel for vari-
ous add/drop cases.
26 J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW. / VOL. 2, NO. 1 / JANUARY 2010
tances of 100 and 200 km, respectively, while the
other channels were switched at the PXC node A. The
change in the static signal power level increased as
the signal wavelength shortened and the transmission
distance increased. These results suggest that the
gain characteristics of the EDFAs slightly changed
against the total optical input power, and such a ten-
dency was emphasized as the number of cascaded ED-
FAs increased. The increase in signal power means
that the impact of fiber nonlinearity, mainly self-
phase modulation, on the signal is emphasized, but re-
moving other signal channels concurrently eliminates
impairments due to fiber-nonlinearity-induced inter-
channel interaction, including four-wave mixing
(FWM) and cross-phase modulation [15]. Thus, such a
signal power change of 1.6 dB for a single channel
could be so small as not to affect actual system design.
We measured the situation when half the signal
channels survived while the other channels were
added or dropped (3 dB add/drop ratio). Figure 10(b)
shows when a block of shorter or longer half-signal
channels survived. There was no significant difference
in overviews of signal channel power changes between
the surviving shorter and longer wavelength chan-
nels. The signal power changes ranged between +0.8
and −0.5 dB for all measured distances and wave-
length allocations. These small random changes in
signal power are expected to occur even when consid-
ering errors due to EDFA gain adjustment and any op-
tical power fluctuations along the system. Figure 10(c)
shows the surviving interleaving signal channels
while the other channels were dropped or added. The
range of the changes in signal power was between
+0.8 to − 0.7 dB for all measured distances and wave-
length allocations and was almost the same as Fig.
10(a). Generally, viewing the results for various
switching cases shown in Fig. 10, we found that most
signal channel power variations against channel addi-
tion or removing converge at less than 1 dB except for
when only the single channel in the shorter wave-
length survived. Thus, we may conclude that the sig-
nal power levels were reasonably stable against vari-
ous numbers of signal channel changes within a
manageable level in actual system operation.
In terms of fiber nonlinearity in WDM systems,
FWM light can be generated through nonlinear inter-
action between the signal channels propagating in the
transmission line. The FWM light occurs at wave-
length positions differing by the spacing of the origi-
nal signals and might affect the signal power level
measurement. Thus, we have estimated the impact of
FWM light generation in our experimental condition
by using the equation described in [16], which can cal-
culate the FWM light in a system with a nonuniform
dispersion value and periodical optical amplification.
The values calculated for static signal power level
Murakami et al.
were less than −50 dB below the original signals for
any combination of the signals in the wavelength
range used, and we can conclude that the FWM light
generation did not significantly affect our measure-
ment because the signal power level changes caused
by switching were retained in the range of only
1.6 dB.
The transmission performance of a WDM system
may also be characterized by the bit error rate or Q
factor of the signal and it has been reported that there
is no significant inconsistency between the transient
optical power change and transmission performance
[17].
V. CONCLUSION
In next-generation optical networks, we will trans-
mit optical signals transparently at as long a distance
as possible and require frequent changes in the signal
path routes. Therefore, precise characterization and
management of system performance are essential,
even during optical switching. We have discussed
various possible signal channel switching cases aris-
ing in an actual transparent optical network and
showed quite a large number of combinations is pre-
sumable. However, some typical cases could be enough
to be measured to grasp an overview of all the cases.
We evaluated the stability of optical signal channel
power in a transparent optical network configured
with large-scale photonic cross-connect switches and
WDM lines operated in the L-band region. The key is-
sues are switching the waveform or speed of the pho-
tonic cross-connect switches and automatic gain con-
trol of the optical amplifiers to suppress any power
fluctuations during and after switching. The detailed
experimental results showed that no significant power
excursions were observed, and static signal power-
level shifts were so small as to be acceptable in an ac-
tual system. Those results indicate that stable opera-
tion of a flexible transparent optical network is
feasible using well-designed 3D MEMS-based optical
switches and EDFAs with an automatic gain control
with proper parameter management, both of which
are based on state-of-the-art technology.
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