The advent of widely tunable lasers, capable of addressing any wavelength within the EDFA window, opens up possibilities not only of increase the number of wavelength channels, but also of new network designs where the cross-connect problem is greatly simplified and even avoided. Such widely tunable lasers are expected to have a strong impact on high-density WDM (HD-WDM) systems.
While the basic technology of widely tunable lasers is well established, there continue to be a lot of basic and practical issues concerning control aspects in a systems environment, the switching and direct modulation properties, and, more generally, the required specifications in relation to different network applications. These issues are addressed in this project.
To introduce widely tuneable lasers into WDM-networks, work on control and wavelength management for such lasers is proposed. Advanced control algorithms, making use of automated characterization and parameter extraction, will be explored, and implementation of these methods will result in readily usable subsystems for a network demonstrator.
The advantage of widely tuneable lasers for routing/switching in optical networks will be demonstrated in a HD-WDM network demonstrator. This demonstrator will use widely tunable transmitter modules, developed within this project, and tunable receivers and will be based mainly on static wavelength routing.