A TRANSPARENT, ALL-OPTICAL, METROPOLITAN NETWORK EXPERIMENT IN A FIELD ENVIRONMENT - THE PROMETEO SELF-HEALING RING

In this paper, we present an optical network demonstrator realizing a wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) metropolitan self-healing ring. The network integrate three optical add-drop multiplexer (OADM) nodes , designed by two manufacturing companies adopting different architect ures and technological solution, It is so demonstrated that transversa l compatibility among optical network entities produced by different c ompanies is possible at the state of the art of the technology. A comp lete transmission performance characterization of the network has been carried and on the most critical path, the error probability is lower that 10(-14). The reconfiguration times in case of failure has been m easured too, demonstrating that this network architecture provide fast self-healing mechanism, in line with the requirements of ITU-T recomm endations for very high capacity networks.