IEICE Communications Express, Vol.2, No.

4, 148153
OSNR improvement by
introducing intra-node
arrayed optical ampliers
into multi-degree ROADM
Yohei Sakamaki
1a)
, Takeshi Kawai
2
, Tomoyoshi Kataoka
2
,
and Mitsunori Fukutoku
2
1
NTT Photonics Laboratories, NTT Corporation,
31, Morinosato-Wakamiya, Atsugi, Kanagawa, 2430198, Japan
2
NTT Network Innovation Laboratories, NTT Corporation,
11, Hikarinooka, Yokosuka, Kanagawa, 2390847, Japan
a) sakamaki.youhei@lab.ntt.co.jp
Abstract: We propose an intra-node arrayed optical amplier (AOA)
to improve the OSNR of received signals by reducing the insertion
loss of multi-degree ROADM nodes. Our AOA shares a pump laser
between several EDFAs with the aim of reducing the module size and
manufacturing cost compared with the size and cost when only arraying
discrete EDFA modules. We conrmed the feasibility of our fabricated
AOA experimentally. The experimental results show that the pump
power was properly distributed to each EDFA and the OSNR of the
received signals was successfully improved for 128-Gbit/s PDM-QPSK
signal transmission systems.
Keywords: recongurable optical add/drop multiplexing, optical am-
plier
Classication: Fiber-Optic Transmission for Communications
References
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Schurer, 512-Gb/s DP-16-QAM eld trial over 734 km installed SSMF
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IEICE 2013
DOI: 10.1587/comex.2.148
Received March 12, 2013
Accepted March 29, 2013
Published April 15, 2013
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IEICE Communications Express, Vol.2, No.4, 148153
with co-propagating 10 Gb/s NRZ neighbors incorporating soft-FEC de-
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[6] Y. Sakamaki, T. Kawai, M. Fukutoku, T. Kataoka, and K. Suzuki, Full-
add/drop C/D/C-less ROADM achieved by developing arrayed optical
ampliers with a shared pump laser, Proc. ECOC, Amsterdam, Nether-
lands, paper P3.03, Sept. 2012.
[7] K. Jinguji, N. Takato, Y. Hida, T. Kitoh, and M. Kawachi, Two-port
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[8] H. Ono, T. Watanabe, K. Suzuki, A. Mori, T. Takahashi, and T.
Sakamoto, An erbium-doped bre amplier with widely variable gain
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ECOC, Geneva, Switzerland, paper Th.11.LeCervin.6, Sept. 2011.
1 Introduction
To deal with increasing trac demand driven by new applications such as
cloud computing while maintaining or lowering network costs, optical trans-
port networks are evolving to achieve more exibility as regards wavelength
path routing in addition to supporting bit rates of 100G and beyond. Re-
congurable optical add/drop multiplexing (ROADM) brought new exibil-
ity and scalability to conventional static optical transport networks. After
the introduction of basic 2-degree ROADM, multi-degree ROADM was de-
veloped to realize mesh-based network topologies [1]. Recently, colorless,
directionless and contentionless (C/D/C-less) ROADM has been attracting
considerable attention for realizing dynamic capacity allocation [2]. How-
ever, the insertion loss of ROADM nodes with these sophisticated functions
is generally higher than that for the basic 2-degree node (for the reason de-
tailed in Section 2). This loss increase leads to a degradation in the optical
signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) of received signals and becomes a more critical
limiting factor for higher bit rate signals. For example, while the required
minimum OSNR with a 0.1-nm resolution is on the order of 13 14 dB for
128-Gbit/s polarization-division-multiplexing quadrature phase-shift keying
(PDM-QPSK) signal transmission [3], that for 256-Gbit/s PDM 16 quadra-
ture amplitude modulation signal transmission is closer to 20 dB [4]. Thus,
if we are to upgrade the capacity of current optical transport networks, it is
crucial to reduce the insertion loss of multi-degree ROADM nodes. In this
paper, we describe the design concept of an arrayed optical amplier (AOA)
that we propose for reducing the node loss, and report experimental results
showing its feasibility and OSNR improvement eect.
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IEICE 2013
DOI: 10.1587/comex.2.148
Received March 12, 2013
Accepted March 29, 2013
Published April 15, 2013
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2 Design of intra-node arrayed optical amplier
2.1 Purpose
First, we describe the multi-degree ROADM node conguration and the
need for intra-node ampliers. Figure 1 (a) shows the conguration of a
4-degree colorless node. This node consists of pre/post ampliers, color-
less switches for connecting input and output express paths (hereafter re-
ferred to as wavelength cross-connects; WXC), multiplexers/demultiplexers
(Mux/Demux) and transmitters/receivers (Tx/Rx). Since it is preferable
to use passive components such as optical couplers/splitters rather than
wavelength-selective switches (WSS) in terms of equipment size and cost,
we assume a broadcast and select architecture using the combination of one
optical splitter and one WSS in the WXC.
Here, let us discuss the insertion loss of signals that pass through this
node. Signals broadcast to other WXCs pass through an express path consist-
ing of one optical splitter, one WSS and several power monitors where about
Fig. 1. (a) Conguration of 4-degree colorless ROADM
node, (b) OSNR of received signals as a func-
tion of the number of spans and level diagram of
signal power in ROADM node, and (c) those for
ROADM node with intra-node ampliers.
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DOI: 10.1587/comex.2.148
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10% of the signal power is tapped. The losses of the WSS and the power
monitor are independent of the node function, that is, the number of degrees.
In contrast, the splitter has an intrinsic splitting loss of 10log(1/M), where
M denotes the number of degrees. Assuming that the WSS loss is 7 dB, the
splitter has an excess loss (such as ber coupling loss) of 1 dB in addition to
the intrinsic splitting loss, and the total loss caused at several power mon-
itoring points is 2 dB. The express-path loss is 16 dB for a 4-degree node.
Of course, the express-path loss increases for a node with a larger M. Fig-
ure 1 (b) shows the OSNR of received optical signals as a function of the
number of spans and a level diagram of the signal power in the node. We
calculated the OSNR based on the assumption that the span loss is 12.5 dB,
the OSNR of the output signal from the Tx is 25 dB, the noise gure of
the ampliers is 8 dB, and the signal powers output from the pre- and post-
ampliers in the node are +2 and 2 dBm/ch, respectively. This result shows
that an increase in the number of degrees signicantly degrades the OSNR
of the received signals.
To suppress the OSNR degradation resulting from the upgrade of the
node function from basic 2-degree to multi-degree, we investigated the intro-
duction of intra-node ampliers instead of increasing the gain of the pre/post
amplier, because the existing pre/post ampliers have very little reserve to
compensate for the increased splitting loss. Figure 1 (c) shows the OSNR
of the received signals and the level diagram of the signal power when we
insert an amplier with a gain of 10 dB after the splitter in the WXC. This
result indicates that intra-node ampliers improve the OSNR and relax the
limitation on transmission distance as in the example below: the maximum
transmission distance can be extended from 10 to 20 spans by introducing
intra-node ampliers for the required minimum OSNR of 20 dB as regards the
8-degree node. Thus, the introduction of intra-node ampliers is a promising
way to ensure that we obtain the OSNR required for higher bit rate signals
or extend the maximum transmission distance.
2.2 Conguration
In this section, we describe the conguration of our developed intra-node
AOA. To reduce the size and manufacturing cost of the intra-node ampliers,
we used the concept of pump sharing between several ampliers instead of
only arraying discrete erbium-doped ber amplier (EDFA) modules. This
concept has already been proposed in [5], and we experimentally demon-
strated its feasibility to compensate for the loss of the transponder aggre-
gator used to provide the contentionless function with C/D/C-less ROADM
nodes [6]. However, the AOA we propose in this paper diers substantially
from the previously reported AOA in terms of the hardware conguration
and the pump power control system.
Figure 2 (a) shows the AOA conguration designed for 8-degree nodes.
The AOA consists of input/output power monitors, a shared pump laser,
signal/pump couplers, EDFAs, isolators and gain-attening lters (GFF).
Since each EDFA amplies the same WDM signals broadcast by the splitter
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IEICE 2013
DOI: 10.1587/comex.2.148
Received March 12, 2013
Accepted March 29, 2013
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IEICE Communications Express, Vol.2, No.4, 148153
Fig. 2. (a) Conguration and (b) photograph of fabri-
cated AOA.
at the WXC, we only have to distribute the pump power to the EDFAs
evenly. This equipartition rule makes the pump power control simpler than
with the AOA for reducing the add/drop-path loss in C/D/C-less nodes [6],
and makes it possible to realize fast automatic gain control (AGC). The
number of EDFAs sharing an identical pump laser depends on a balance of
the designed gain with the output power of the shared laser. In this work,
the designed gain value is 10 dB for 88-channel WDM systems, and the pump
laser is shared between two EDFAs.
Next, we describe the fabrication details. We used a 976-nm laser with an
output power of 850 mW as the shared pump laser, and AGC is achieved by
controlling its output power. The pump power is distributed to two EDFAs
through a 1 2 splitter fabricated using silica-based planar lightwave circuit
(PLC) technology. The tap couplers for the power monitor and signal/pump
couplers are integrated in one PLC chip [7, 8]. Figure 2 (b) shows the appear-
ance of the fabricated AOA module, which is 20022044 mm in size. This
module includes eight EDFAs, four shared pump lasers, photodiode arrays,
passive optical components (PLC chips, isolators, GFF) and the controller
board.
3 Experimental results
We conrmed the feasibility of our proposed AOA experimentally. First,
we ensured that the pump power was properly distributed to each EDFA.
Figure 3 (a) and (b) show the measured gain value and noise gure of each
EDFA. The power level diagram of this experiment corresponds to that of
the express path in the 8-degree node. One continuous-wave (CW) light
with the power of 9 dBm and fteen other CW lights in the C-band were
launched simultaneously into the AOA. To emulate the input power of 88-
channel WDM systems, we adjusted the power of the fteen CW lights to
1.4 dBm/ch. Then, we measured the output power and noise gure for one
CW light with an input power of 9 dBm. The frequency of the measured
CW light changed from 192.2 to 195.5 THz. As shown in Fig. 3 (a), the gain
deviation from the designed value of 10 dB and the noise gure were less than
0.5 dB and 7.6 dB, respectively, for all the EDFAs (Amp. 1 8).
Next, we report the results of a transmission experiment designed to
demonstrate the OSNR improvement eect. We launched a 128-Gbit/s PDM-
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IEICE 2013
DOI: 10.1587/comex.2.148
Received March 12, 2013
Accepted March 29, 2013
Published April 15, 2013
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Fig. 3. Measured (a) gain and (b) noise gure for CW
light. (c) Experimental setup and (d) measured
Q-factors for 128-Gbit/s PDM-QPSK signal.
QPSK signal instead of the CW lights and measured the Q-factors. Fig-
ure 3 (c) shows the experimental setup. The recirculating loop consisted of
a 40-km SMF and the optical node including pre/post-ampliers, one 1 8
splitter, one WSS and the fabricated AOA. Note that we set the span loss at
22.5 dB, which is 10 dB higher than that for the OSNR estimation example
described in Section 2.1. Figure 3 (d) shows the measured Q-factors against
the span number. The Q-factors obtained in the experiment with the fab-
ricated AOA were higher than those for the experiment without the AOA.
This result indicates that the OSNR of the received signals was successfully
improved by introducing our proposed intra-node AOA.
4 Conclusion
We proposed an intra-node AOA with a shared pump laser to reduce a loss
of multi-degree ROADM nodes, while suppressing increases in module size
and manufacturing cost. The experimental results show that as expected
the pump power was properly distributed to each EDFA and the OSNR
of the received 128-Gbit/s PDM-QPSK signals was improved by using our
fabricated AOA.
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IEICE 2013
DOI: 10.1587/comex.2.148
Received March 12, 2013
Accepted March 29, 2013
Published April 15, 2013
153