Optical crossconnect (OXC) systems are essential part of the next generation mesh-based core optical networks. Among various switching technologies, micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) has proven itself as the leading choice for realizing large port count OXC switch fabrics. Although much effort have been reported on the development of large port count MEMS-based switch fabric, the reliability of the OXC systems must also be carefully considered in order to achieve a survivable optical network. In this thesis, our studies on the reliability issues in MEMS-based large scale OXC system focus on two parts: 1) lifetime and operational economic of switch fabric for different switch fabric architectures, and 2) connection availability as a function of switch fabric's port failure rate....[ Read more ]

Optical crossconnect (OXC) systems are essential part of the next generation mesh-based core optical networks. Among various switching technologies, micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) has proven itself as the leading choice for realizing large port count OXC switch fabrics. Although much effort have been reported on the development of large port count MEMS-based switch fabric, the reliability of the OXC systems must also be carefully considered in order to achieve a survivable optical network. In this thesis, our studies on the reliability issues in MEMS-based large scale OXC system focus on two parts: 1) lifetime and operational economic of switch fabric for different switch fabric architectures, and 2) connection availability as a function of switch fabric's port failure rate.

For the first part, we discussed the two major arrangements for an switch fabric, which are the monolithic switch fabric and the modular switch fabric, and we compare several important reliability parameters between the two arrangements, including the average number of replacements, the average number of forced service interrupts and the operational economic of OXC system over its service lifespan. Connection availability is then investigated for unprotected and protected OXC systems. It is shown that by employing the protection scheme, connection availability can be significantly enhanced even at relative high port failure rate (> 5,000 FIT).

Finally, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a highly scalable 1:1 protection switching scheme for enhancing connection availability in MEMS-based OXC systems. Such scheme employs a low-cost laser transceiver in conjunction with 2x2 switches to facilitate efficient inter-port communication, rapid execution of the restoration procedures against port failure and other network functions such as connection verification.