A novel simple and low-cost wavelength reconfigurable all-optic wavelength router

With the development of all-optic network, the research of all-optic wavelength routing technology becomes a hot subject in all over the world. In this paper a new structure optical wavelength router which is feasible in the reality is proposed whose main advantage is having no tunable components and converting multiple wavelengths simultaneously. The proposed design is very similar to a traditional wavelength router structure, but the difference is in two fold. First it uses fixed wavelength converter. This converter converts any input wavelength to fixed wavelength. Second it allows loop back of the light. With this allowance of loop back, we can achieve the ability of tunable wavelength converter using fixed tuned wavelength converter. In comparison with previously reported structures, our design has the advantage of its simplicity and low-cost. The all-optic router prototype is experimentally tested in a small 3X3 network with a STM-16 bit stream per channel.