Active photonic switching components, such as reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers (ROADMs), cannot be deployed at the branching units (BUs) in submarine networks, which limits the flexibility of the undersea networks. In this regard, the filterless optical network architecture based on passive broadcast-and-select nodes and coherent transceivers at the edge terminals can be considered as a promising solution. In this paper we propose and evaluate a filterless network architecture for a trunk and branch undersea network topology. The performance is compared with a conventional solution in terms of cost and wavelength consumption. And it is shown that the filterless architecture can bring significant cost savings for both the terminals and line equipment while offering the same agility as the conventional network architecture.Index Terms-Optical networks, undersea networks, submarine applications, filterless optical network, coherent optical communication, network architecture and design, active photonic switching, broadcast-and-select, trunk and branch, branching unit (BU), routing and wavelength assignment (RWA).
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.