New advances on optical components needed for FDM optical networks

Two critical components, needed for optical networks based on frequency division multiplexing (FDM) and frequency reuse technologies, are presented. One is a fast tunable laser, yielding 24 discrete frequencies regularly spaced by 40 GHz around 1.53 μm. The laser can be switched randomly in less than 8 ns among these frequencies. Frequency routing of a 3-Gb/s bit stream in 10-ns packets between ten different destinations has been demonstrated with this laser. The second component is a broadband wavelength shifter capable of switching multigigabit data between optical frequencies in the 1.5-μm region. The device is tunable and cascadable, provides conversion gain, and is nearly polarization insensitive. Data degradation after wavelength shifting is negligible. Such a device provides the means of reusing the limited set of frequencies given by the lasers and thus of realizing large size networks