A Review of the Development of ELectro-Optic and Electronic Components for Gbit/s Optical Fibre Systems

Executive Summary Recognizing industry's need for the entire component level infrastructure to be upgraded to support higher system capacity, the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) authorized their Physical and Link Layer (PLL) Working Group to begin a new project, referred to as Electronic Dispersion Compensation (EDC) for 10Gb/s 1550nm Links. The goal of the project is to initiate the standardization of new optical links that benefit from the technical and economic advantages of EDC, extending the reach of present Optical Transport Network (OTN) 10Gb/s technology from 1600ps/nm (80km) to 2400ps/nm (120km). The output of this project is a set of recommended application codes that has been provided by the OIF to the ITU, based on modeled and measured data validating the ability of EDC to support 2400ps/nm links. The OIF's unique ability to leverage the EDC integrated circuit expertise and optical expertise allowed these application codes to be developed within nine months. These application codes provide the basis for the electro-optic interfaces enabling the next generation of lower-cost, high performance networks.