Research on Optical Communication Network Structure for IP over WDM

Optical systems nowadays provide the basis for cost-effective transmission of large amounts of bandwidth over the Internet, and will enable its future growth and the spreading of new applications and services. WDM wavelength multiplexing technology is the newest technology which minimizes the costs. WDM generates multiple "virtual fibers" in the current fiber cable infrastructures and makes the capacity in the level of terabits per second. As packet switching in these data rates is not possible, Optical crossconnects are used to switch the wavelengths. In this paper, we analysis and discuss the optical network structure for IP over WDM. A novel WDM network architecture is given. The capabilities of the routers and the optical crossconnects make it possible to have high data rates by doing the multiplexing of the data rates in the optical layer, so SDH and ATM layers which traditionally did these become needless. As a result, integration of IP with the simplified and cost effective transport layer makes it possible to carry very high data rates.