Hole-Burning Mediated Dynamics for Channel Band Reconfiguration in Metro ROADM Systems

This paper investigates the channel power dynamics of rapid channel band switching in metro-regional scale ROADM networks for inter-data center traffic management applications. Measurements on a 4 span, 5 ROADM path show power excursions of up to 6.3 dB, when switching 10 channels into the line with only two pre-existing channels. This large band switching results in a consistently positive or small excursions that yield minimal impacts on the received channel performance for 200 Gb/s DP-16-QAM signals. These initial results indicate the potential for rapid wavelength switching if the effects of power dynamics are accounted for.