Abstract

The ultra-high bit rate systems of the future will require the use of solitons in transmission to overcome the dispersion penalty associated with short pulses. Time division multiplexing (TDM) of these short pulses can be achieved by using passive couplers and delay lines as indicated in figure 1. However, demultiplexing presents a problem because of the very high switching speeds that are required. In this paper we describe a new method to achieve this demultiplexing passively. The scheme we are suggesting uses an optical fibre to create a wavelength division demultiplexed (WDD) system from a TDM input. This conversion is achieved by using the soliton self frequency shift^[1].

© 1989 Optical Society of America