Novel self-healing bi-directional wavelength path switched WDM ring: Principle and experiment

A novel bi-directional wavelength path switched ring (BWPSR) is proposed and demonstrated. Various optical channel layer protection schemes (1+1 UPSR, Optical BLSR, and BWPSR) are discussed and compared. BWPSR has an advantage of higher efficiency of wavelength utilization and smaller propagation delay for optical channel layer ring restoration. Both BER and Jitter performances of BWPSR are measured, which comply with Bellcore standard requirement. Optical channel layer span and ring protection time are measured to be 13 ms and 23 ms, respectively, which are faster than SONET standard requirement (50 ms). Interoperability test with other WDM transport equipment are performed, which shows no performance degradation.