A full transparent fiber-optic ring architecture for WDM networks

A fully transparent fiber-optic ring architecture for wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) networks is proposed. The physical topology of the proposed network is based on a single or multifiber ring. The nodes at the periphery of the network are connected onto the ring via a polarization-independent acoustically tunable optical filter (PIATOF). This device is used for injecting the transmission from each node at a predefined wavelength onto the ring and at the same time for accessing the transmission of the other nodes. Expressions are derived for the throughput of different network configurations