Abstract

Given an optical bandwidth of approximately 30 Tbit/s and a peak electronic processing speed of a few gigabits per second, the key challenge in building optical networks is to develop innovative parallelism and concurrency mechanisms that can exploit this huge electro-optic mismatch. The concurrency may be provided according to wavelength (WDMA), time (TDMA), or wave shape (CDMA). WDMA has emerged as the most promising choice since, unlike the other alternatives, it requires that all of the end-user equipment operate at only the bit rate of a WDM channel, which can be chosen to be the peak electronic speed.

© 1993 Optical Society of America