Design and Test of an Experimental Optical Cross-Connect

We describe the architecture of an optical cross-connect (OXC) which is modular in structure and is able to be upgraded to a virtual wavelength path from a wavelength path by adding wavelength converters. The additional feature of the OXC is the all-optical nature. It can be implemented with commercial components including mechanical optical switches. As a result of the test on the experimental OXC, it has been shown that 2.5 Gb/s signal can be transmitted via the OXC through 100㎞ length of an ordinary single mode fiber with 3㏈ penalty.