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3 Tunable Optical Components
By qwcdirect | March 27, 2010
arious optical components for use in optical communication systems, such as systems using wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), are known. Wavelength division multiplexing is commonly used to more efficiently utilize the scarce resource of bandwidth for high-speed data transmission in an optical fiber network.
Examples of tunable or fixed optical components include tunable Fabry-Perot (FP) filters and applications using the (FP) filtering principle to provide further wavelength selective components. These are circulators and one-port or multiport wavelength add/drop multiplexers or demultiplexers, modulators, variable optical attenuators, isolators, and switches
As standard line rates in the optical network core continue to increase by many orders of magnitude, it becomes increasingly difficultto manage bandwidth in the electrical domain. While signals will always be processed electrically at the edge or perhaps beyond, today’s goal is to obtain efficiencies of scale in the core. Tunable optical components provide this solution. Traditionally, the photonic layer lacked intelligence. However, tunable components will change this by allowing the photonic layer to make informed decisions about network operation.
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