Optical time division multiplexing for future high-capacity network applications : Advances in optical technology

Future networks operating in excess of 10 Gbit/s are likely to require optical multiplexing to obtain such high capacities, linking all major nodes in the inland network. The implementation of optical fibre amplifiers instead of optoelectronic regenerators would future-proof the transmission fabric, permitting capacity upgrades through modifications to terminal equipment. Optical nonlinearity will form an ultimate limit to the capacity of simple wavelength division multiplexed systems. In the longer term, upgrading to an optical time division multiplexed (OTDM) super-trunk network would provide a core transport layer of very high capacity so that services requiring large bandwidth on demand could be enabled