A power-compensated bidirectional reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer (Bi-ROADM) based on tunable fiber Bragg gratings is proposed and demonstrated. By splicing a fiber Bragg grating (FBG) within a piece of an erbium-doped fiber, a lossless, low-cost, and simply structured Bi-ROADM is obtained. The total pumping power is 40mW with 0.6m of gain fiber for both upstream and downstream signals. The Bi-ROADM performance is evaluated using a bidirectional four-channel 50km lightwave transmission link using a 2.5Gbits/s bit rate per channel. Bit-error-rate (BER) performances show that the power penalties are 0.49 and 0.76dB at a 10⁻⁹ BER, respectively, for the 25km dropped channel and the 50km passed-through channel as compared to the back-to-back condition. An extra power penalty of only 0.2dB is observed for bidirectional transmission compared to the unidirectional transmission case. Cross-talk issues and chromatic dispersion are also studied. The induced power penalty by adjacent channel cross talk is negligible (≦0.2dB) with a narrow channel spacing of 1.0nm. The induced power penalty by intraband (homodyne) cross talk is also negligible for the cross-talk level of −30dB, corresponding to 99.9% reflectivity of the FBG. The Bi-ROADM may find important applications in bidirectional WDM networks and/or bidirectional transmission.

© 2008 Optical Society of America

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Citation lists with outbound citation links are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an OSA member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Log in to access OSA Member Subscription

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Cited by links are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an OSA member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Log in to access OSA Member Subscription

Related Journal Articles

• Timing restoration dynamics in an actively mode-locked fiber ring laser (OL)
• Stabilization of an active harmonically mode-locked fiber laser using two-photon absorption (OL)
• Control of critical coupling in a ring resonator–fiber configuration: application to wavelength-selective switching, modulation, amplification, and oscillation (OL)
• Time-division multiplexing of pump wavelengths to achieve ultrabroadband, flat, backward-pumped Raman gain (OL)
• Reduced timing jitter in dispersion-managed light-wave systems through parametric amplification (JOSAB)

Related Conference Papers

• A 160-km transparent metro WDM ring network featuring cascaded erbium-doped waveguide amplifiers
• High output power erbium doped waveguide amplifier for QAM distribution
• Transmission of Classical Information Over a Noisy Quantum Channel
• Transmission of Classical Information Over a Noisy Quantum Channel
• Optical Amplifiers Face Mid-Life Challenges
• Impact of Self- and Cross-Phase Modulation on Highly Efficient Discrete Raman Amplifier for 10-Gb/s 100-GHz-Spaced WDM Transmission