A cost-saving, crosstalk-free and bidirectional optical add-drop multiplexer (B-OADM) based on cascaded thin-film optical add-drop filters (TFOADFs) with optical circulators as well as the optical protection function promptly restored at the access node for a single-fiberself-healingaccessringnetwork are proposed and demonstrated. Using this B-TFOADM configuration, no crosstalk appears on the dropped and added channels, respectively. The bit-error rate performances in this B-OADM are investigated in a 2.5-Gb/s DWDM system, showing no intraband and interband crosstalk-induced power penalties. Such crosstalk-free and bidirectional architecture greatly simplifies the hub complexity as well as the low-cost components at each node are employed.
