Abstract

In recent years there has been a growing interest in the study of transparent optical networks which provide both switching and transmission totally within the optical domain.^1,2 Such networks offer both large bandwidth and the flexibility required to support the demands of future telecommunication and computer services on national and international networks. There are many applications for such networks, but the telecommunication network transport layer is one of particular interest. This layer must support very high capacity transmission and provide the crossconnect switching necessary to reconfigure the network. The realisation of optical transport layers has been made possible by the development of the erbium amplifier, optical space switches and the use of wavelength division multiplexing techniques.¹ Such technologies are now available for deployment, however the design of transparent networks is still a topic of research, as they have very different characteristics from conventional optoelectronic networks.

© 1995 IEEE