Researchers at Siemens, in collaboration with partners at BT and the Technical University of Eindhoven, have develop an extremely fast optical switch known as a TD-OADM (Time-Domain Optical Add-Drop Multiplexer) that enables the transmission and routing of diverse data elements in a single light wave length through the network. Conventional optical switches can only direct complete waveguides.
Over a two-year period, Siemens researchers collaborated with workers from the COBRA Institute of Eindhoven Technical University (Netherlands) and BTexact in the EU-sponsored FASHION project (Ultra Fast Switching in High-Speed OTDM Networks). In a recent field test BTexact made available four 70-km optical routes between the English towns of Ipswich and Newmarket. The test succeeded in cascading sixteen 10 Gbps signals into a single wavelength and carrying the 160 Gbps data error-free along the entire 280 km stretch. The TD-OADM, which is to assume the role of the TD-OADM in future networks, read out some of the data elements at around the halfway stage of the total route and replaced these data elements by others. The optical switch filtered out individual bits in the 160 Gbps stream by means of laser control pulses.
- Ultra Fast Switching in OTDM Networks
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