Future high-capacity optical telecommunication networks

Since their first introduction in the late 1980s, long–distance optical–fibre trans1 mission systems have advanced from transmission speeds of 140 Mbit s–1 for the first optical transatlantic system to exceed 1 Tbit s–1 (1 Tbit s–1 = 1012 bit s –1) in just 10 years! Laboratory demonstrations of optical transmission at 100 Gbit s –1 per channel and use of over 132 channels in a singe fibre are in progress, in the attempt to tap into the huge bandwidth of optical fibres. These developments, in combination with enormous growth in data and voice traffic, have led to many new research ideas for the design of conceptually different high–capacity optical telecommunication networks for the future. This paper reviews some of the dramatic technological developments in architectures, systems and devices, and discusses the ideas of how best to exploit the fibre bandwidth for transmission and processing of information.

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