Article Abstracts | September 2007
The complete article appears in the September 2007 issue of Photonics Spectra. If you do not have a copy of this issue,
e-mail us a request. Be sure to include your street address or fax number.
Chalcogenide Glass, Advanced for All-Optical Processing
Ultrafast photonic integrated circuits could benefit next-generation optical
communications systems.
by Benjamin J. Eggleton, Vahid G. Ta’eed and Barry Luther-Davies,
Centre for Ultrahigh-bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems
To operate at high bit rates of 160 Gb/s and beyond, optical communications systems must be able to process signals entirely in the optical domain, thereby overcoming the speed limitations associated with optoelectronic conversion. All-optical signal processing involves the control of light by light, which is possible only in a nonlinear optical material.
Before the adoption of wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) in the 1990s, the only means of expanding the bandwidth of an optical system was to increase its data rate. Therefore, twenty years ago a lot of effort was devoted to identifying optical materials with nonlinear properties suitable for all-optical processing. The advent of WDM delayed the push to all-optical processing, but the situation now has changed, and researchers are looking to process signals optically as a means of reducing not only the complexity but also the cost of high-capacity transmission systems...
Start a discussion on this article or any photonics topic in the Photonics.com Community Forum