Terminology » What is PLC ROADM: Planar Lightwave Circuit ROADM

What is PLC ROADM: Planar Lightwave Circuit ROADM

fiber optic optical network wdm optical component plc roadm

A PLC ROADM (Planar Lightwave Circuit Reconfigurable Optical Add-Drop Multiplexer) is an optical networking device that dynamically routes wavelength channels in DWDM systems. By leveraging PLC technology, ROADMs improve network flexibility, scalability, bandwidth utilization and operational efficiency in modern optical transport networks.

The full form of PLC ROADM is Planar Lightwave Circuit ROADM.

Planar Lightwave Circuit-PLC ROADM

The figure above depicts the architecture of a PLC ROADM based Degree-2 node.

Following are the features of PLC type of ROADM:

  • It consists of a pair of modules, one ‘Add module’ and one ‘Drop module’. Hence, there are 2 ADD and 2 DROP modules.
  • Uses 40 C band channels with 100 GHz spacing.