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Abstract. To move beyond dedicated links and networks, quantum communications signals must be integrated into networks carrying classical optical channels at power levels many orders of magnitude higher than the quantum signals themselves. We demonstrate the transmission of a 1550 nm quantum channel with up to two simultaneous 200 GHz spaced classical telecom channels, using reconfigurable optical add drop multiplexer (ROADM) technology for multiplexing and routing quantum and classical signals. The quantum channel is used to perform quantum key distribution (QKD) in the presence of noise generated as a by-product of the co-propagation of classical channels. We demonstrate that the dominant noise mechanism can arise from either four-wave mixing or spontaneous Raman scattering, depending on the optical path characteristics as well as the classical channel parameters. We quantify these impairments and discuss mitigation strategies.

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A novel optical switch based on cascading two terahertz optical asymmetric demultiplexers (TOAD) is presented. By utilizing the sharp edge of the asymmetric TOAD switching window profile, two TOAD switching windows are overlapped to produce a narrower aggregate switching window, not limited by the pulse propagation time in the SOA of the TOAD. Simulations of the cascaded TOAD switching window show relatively constant window amplitude for different window sizes. Experimental results on cascading two TOADs, each with a switching window of 8ps, but with the SOA on opposite sides of the fiber loop, show a minimum switching window of 2.7ps.

This paper presents the design and experimental results of an optical packet-switching testbed capable of performing message routing with single wavelength time division multiplexed (TDM) packet bit rates as high as 100 Gb/s. The physical topology of the packet-switched optical networking demonstration (POND) node is based on an eight-node ShuffleNet architecture. The key enabling technologies required to implement the node such as ultrafast packet generation, high-speed packet demultiplexing, and efficient packet routing schemes are described in detail. The routing approach taken is a hybrid implementation in which the packet data is maintained purely in the optical domain from source to destination whereas control information is read from the packet header at each node and converted to the electrical domain for an efficient means of implementing routing control. The technologies developed for the interconnection network presented in this paper can be applied to larger metropolitan and wide area networks as well