Transparent Two-Fiber Optical Channel Shared Protection Ring

A two-fiber optical channel shared protection ring including node architecture, signaling protocol, control hardware, and software is designed and implemented experimentally. For a ring with four nodes and two wavelengths, a total protection switching time of 6.8 ms is demonstrated along with a revert-to-working switching time of 1.6 ms. Experimental results show that the switching time scales linearly with number of nodes and number of wavelengths. The system can protect a ring with 16 nodes, 1200 km circumference, and 40 wavelengths in less than 50 ms.