Experimental demonstration of spectrum-sliced elastic optical path network (SLICE)

Area of Science:

• Optical networking
• Telecommunications engineering

Background:

• Existing optical networks face limitations in bandwidth scalability and spectral efficiency.
• The need for flexible and high-capacity optical path provisioning is growing.

Purpose of the Study:

• To experimentally demonstrate the Spectrum-Sliced Elastic Optical Path Network (SLICE) architecture.
• To evaluate the performance of SLICE in terms of bandwidth scalability and spectral efficiency.

Main Methods:

• Utilized optical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation.
• Employed bandwidth-variable optical cross-connects (OXC).
• Configured a six-node mesh network for experimental setup.

Main Results:

• Successfully generated and transmitted optical paths with bandwidths up to 1 Tb/s.
• Demonstrated elastic optical path setup and spectrally-efficient transmission of multiple channels (40-140 Gb/s).
• Showcased dynamic bandwidth scalability (40-440 Gb/s) and multihop transmission (1 Tb/s over 400 km SMF).

Conclusions:

• The SLICE architecture enables high-capacity, spectrally-efficient, and scalable optical networking.
• Experimental results validate the feasibility of SLICE for future high-bandwidth communication systems.
• Investigation into filtering properties and guard band requirements is crucial for optimal SLICE deployment.