Abstract

Recent developments in high-speed optical technology made it possible to experimentally transmit time-division multiplexed (TDM) optical signals at 100-Gbit/s region.^1-3 Figure 1 shows a schematic configuration of the high-speed optical TDM transmission and high-speed optical techniques. They include generation of picosecond transform-limited optical pulses from a tunable actively mode-locked (ML) erbium-doped fiber (EDF) ring laser or shorter pulses by supercontinuum technique, all-optical time-division multiplexing using planar lightwave circuits, high-speed clock recovery by a phase-lock loop (PLL) based on four-wave mixing (FWM) in a laser-diode amplifier (LDA), and ultrahigh-speed all-optical demultiplexing based on nonlinearities in fiber or LDA. To date, 100 Gbit/s, 500 km transmission² and 200 Gbit/s, 100 km transmission³ were achieved that employ prescaled PLL timing extraction and all-optical demultiplexing. In addition to these techniques, some new techniques are recently developed to make 100-Gbit/s communication systems more feasible. In what follows new progresses are presented together with prospects of high-speed TDM transmission technology.

© 1996 Optical Society of America