Challenges in Stable, High-Capacity Optical Communication Networks

When envisioning the 10-year horizon, there are certain laudable goals that may be pursued, such as higher capacity, efficiency, stability, reconfigurability, flexibility, and security. Specifically, it might be desirable for an efficient and robust future optical network to provide the following functions: (a) optical performance monitoring for enabling self-management of the physical layer of the network, (b) reconfigurability to accommodate a convergence of different types of data traffic over the same network, and (c) "smart" optical signal processing to complement electronic techniques. Within these three themes, this presentation will describe how integrated optics might be employed towards realizing these functions.