Add-drop multiplexer

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Add-drop multiplexer" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (July 2007) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

An add-drop multiplexer (ADM) is an important element of an optical fiber network. A multiplexer combines, or multiplexes, several lower-bandwidth streams of data into a single beam of light. An add-drop multiplexer also has the capability to add one or more lower-bandwidth signals to an existing high-bandwidth data stream, and at the same time can extract or drop other low-bandwidth signals, removing them from the stream and redirecting them to some other network path. This is used as a local "on-ramp" and "off-ramp" to the high-speed network.^[1]

ADMs can be used both in long-haul core networks and in shorter-distance "

.

Newer "multi-service

to a service provider's optical backbone. At the end of 2003, sales of multiservice ADMs exceeded those of legacy ADMs for the first time, as the change to next-generation SONET/SDH networks accelerated.

An emerging variety of ADMs that is becoming popular as the carriers continue to invest in metro optical networks are reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexers (ROADMs).

References