Optical Pan-European Network

Exploitable results

There is currently an ever-growing interest in the development of multi-wavelength optical systems. Several manufacturers are now offering multi-wavelength products, and several major network operators are carrying out field trials or have actually started deployment of such systems in the transport layer of the telecommunications network. Hence a clear and deep understanding of the issues involved in the design of such large-scale WDM networks is crucial to these network operators. A number of network operators and vendors are developing tools in this field, for that purpose. OPEN partners have gained invaluable experience in the design, dimensioning and optimization of WDM networks, and in methods of investigating network performance and developing relevant metrics.

In the OPEN project the basic functionality of an all-optical OTDM-WDM interface, aiming at a capacity of 40 Gbit/s, has been analyzed and experimentally demonstrated. In a partitioned network structure, as envisaged in the networks studies arising from COST 239 project, the OTDM-WDM interface could provide an effective way of interconnecting two distant WDM networks by means of a OTDM trunk line by keeping the signal in the optical domain. Different applications can be foreseen, besides pure high capacity transmission: wavelength shuffle between networks and broadcasting, OTDM add-drop multiplexing. The developed interface consists of two blocks : - an OTDM to WDM converter, simultaneously performing demultiplexing from a high speed (40 Gbit/s) data stream into its tributaries at lower speed (10 Gbit/s), by assigning them a different output wavelength - a WDM to OTDM converter, where many NRZ data streams at 10 Gbit/s at any wavelength are transformed into RZ pulses at a single wavelength, suitable for long distance transmission, and interleaved to get a very high speed (40 Gbit/s) data stream.

Exploitable results

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