Abstract

The SONET self-healing ring has recently emerged as a viable means of providing survivable interconnection among telephone central offices.¹ In the event of a link or node failure, such a ring electronically reconfigures, generating a loop-back path that preserves ring integrity. In its conventional form, this scheme has the disadvantage of requiring duplicate high-speed electronic multiplexers at each node in its protection path; however, this disadvantage can be mitigated by employing an optical protection path containing lightwave amplifiers in place of the duplicated high-speed electronics.² Here we demonstrate such an optical protection network comprising six amplifiers spanning >200 km, about the size range of interest for survivable interoffice rings in metropolitan areas.

© 1992 Optical Society of America