High speed optoelectronics for optical communication

The next century will be characterized by the global communication employing user-friendly digital terminals, with which we can exchange voice, picture and data among both individuals and offices. Already the recent statistics tells us that the data communication is very close to the telephone (voice) communication and that the former will soon surpass the latter largely because of the exponential growth of new services through Internet. The data communication traffic has its distinct features over the conventional telephone traffic such as its bursty nature and the number of terminals not restricted by the real human population (the computers can act as senders and recipients). This changes the future forecast of required demands of information capacity upward. The OITDA report on optical communication road map estimates the 1 Mbps data channel will be used by the majority of users by 2010. Already the 1 Tbps single stretch communication channel is the business issue. To support such growing demands the communication facilities and their components must satisfy the high performance requirements with the low cost of fabrication. The recent trends of device technology supporting massive multiplexing (TDM, WDM and O-TDM) are reviewed.