Abstract

There has recently been much interest in the use of extended optical bus network architectures both as a means of switching and as a means of broadcast distribution[1]. The accumulation of loss through the many tapping points in such passive architectures has, until now, limited these networks to only a modest size. However, recent advances in optical amplifiers[2], both semiconductor and active fibre based, has provided flexibility in the design of such networks by extending the available power budget. A single, long, erbium-doped fibre amplifier employed as the communications backbone of the bus is particularly suited to this application[3] because the gain is distributed along the entire length of the network and is not specific to a particular location.

© 1990 Optical Society of America