Converged Inter/Intradata Center Optical Network With Packet Super-Channels and 83.33 Tb/s/port

We experimentally demonstrate a novel, time-slotted, converged inter/intradata center optical network that employs multi-core fibers (MFCs), packet spatial super-channels (pSSCs), and core-joint optical switches. The fundamental switching subsystem is a high-granularity core-joint electro-absorption optical switch, based on an array of electro-absorption 1×4 switching gates with a switching time of approximately 10 ns, and is able to jointly switch all the wavelength and spatial channels of the pSSCs simultaneously. Lower granularity core-joint switches may be used in the pSSC switching nodes for other tasks, such as network protection or bypass. Previously, we experimentally demonstrated a 2×2 pSSC switching system with a capacity of 53.3 Tb/s/port in a testbed with pSSCs composed of 64 wavelength channels, 7 spatial channels, and PDM-QPSK-modulated payloads. In this paper, we enhance our testbed experimental setup to demonstrate a record switching capacity of 83.33 Tb/s/port with pSSCs composed of 64 wavelength channels, 8 spatial channels, and PDM-8PSK-modulated payloads. We also demonstrate the transparency of the core-joint electro-absorption switch by comparing the new results with the previous PDM-QPSK results in terms of the error-vector magnitude.