An optical infrastructure for future telecommunications networks

For the transport of the increasing traffic volume caused by existing and new narrowband services and evolving broadband services, the enhancement of the existing public telecommunication transport network is necessary. For this purpose an optical network layer with cross-connect and add/drop functionalities will be added to the existing transport network. A comparative analysis of space, time, and optical frequency division multiplexing has shown that for the time being optical frequency multiplexing is best suited for the realization of that new network layer. This multiplexing scheme offers the greatest advantages such as very high bandwidth utilization in the fiber and simple and efficient cross-connecting of high bitrate streams. In the near future, technology will be mature enough for the realization of a demonstrator network based on optical frequency division multiplexing. The functionalities of the optical network are evaluated and the results clearly show that optical frequency conversion and regeneration should be provided by the optical network. The article also deals with the realization aspects (cross-connecting, supervision, and operation and maintenance) of an optical node