ENERGY EFFICIENT, CONTENTIONLESS NxM ROADM WITH AMPLIFIED SINGLE WAVELENGTH DROP/ADD PORTS AND CORRESPONDING METHODS

An add-side reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer component comprising:

• a PLC based N×M multicast switch connected to N network side optical conduits, wherein N, M are integers each ≥1;
• a PLC based array of P or M variable optical attenuators (1≤P≤M) with two sets of P or M optical ports wherein a first set of optical ports are connected by optical conduits to the N×M multicast switch;
• and
• a PLC based tunable optical filter array with P or M channels (1≤P≤M) and with two sets of P or M optical ports wherein a first set of optical ports are connected by optical conduits to corresponding P or M ports of the PLC based array of variable optical attenuators and a second set of P or M ports are connected to P light conduits connected to output ports of a user transceiver.

An optical telecommunications node comprising:

• N input optical signal conduits, wherein N is an integer ≥1;
• N output optical signal conduits;
• M single wavelength input optical signal conduits, wherein M is an integer ≥1;
• M single wavelength output optical signal conduits;
• a reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer (ROADM) comprising an add side PLC multicast switch, a drop side PLC multicast switch, two arrays of PLC tunable optical filters (TOF) with one array of TOF configured on the add configuration multicast switch and with one array of TOF configured on the drop configuration multicast switch, wherein the ROADM connects the N input optical signal conduits with the M single wavelength output optical conduits through the drop side multicast switch and connects the N output optical signal conduits with the M single wavelength input signal conduits through the add side multicast switch;
• P input single wavelength optical fibers, P≤M, wherein each input single wavelength optical fiber is configured in an add configuration to receive an optical signal from a transmitter;
• and
• P output single wavelength optical fibers, wherein each output single wavelength optical fiber is configured in a drop configuration to transmit an optical signal to a receiver.