A system demonstration of optical circuit switching in a space-based WDM Optical Transport Network

Photonics represents a key technology in a wide range of space applications, in particular for space telecommunications, in which a huge effort has been spent by Space Agencies and Industries to find a feasible way to implement a space OTN infrastructure capable to extend and complement the already existing terrestrial one. Following this field, this paper provides a system functionality demonstration and performance evaluation of a Space OTN node exploiting an optical switching matrix to perform wavelength circuit switching of WDM channels: the chosen configuration of the optical payload exhibits at one probe received channel a minimum BER of the order of 10−7, which is a meaningful result taking in account that no on board regeneration and processing of the signal (e.g. Forward Error Correction encoding, interleaving, etc.) has been implemented.