PHOTONIC HIGHWAY SWITCHES BASED ON RING RESONATORS USED AS FREQUENCY-SELECTIVE COMPONENTS

A new concept for a highway switch, which can be used to connect diffe rent optical wavelength division multiplexing data highways for data e xchange, is proposed and the system relevant properties are outlined. For the required add-drop filter elements we used ring resonators. Typ ical characteristics of channel bandwidth, channel spacing, free spect ral range, amplification, and cross-talk behavior of a highway switch with double-cavity ring resonators are basically examined and to some extent compared with solutions that were obtained with standard single -ring resonators. A signal flow chart transformation for evaluating fi lter transfer functions is presented. (C) 1996 Optical Society of Amer ica