Tommy Mullane

Full Coverage microsecond wavelength switching of a monolithic widely tunable laser, from any channel to any channel, over the entire C band on the ITU G.682 ITU grid

Full coverage, wavelength switching over the entire C band on the 100 GHz ITU frequency grid, from any channel to any channel in a single microsecond, is presented here for the first time. This switching time is achieved whilst ensuring that the terminal lasing frequency is within +/- 2.5GHz of the target ITU 1 us after the switching event. The current paper presents the key parameters associated with such a laser transmitter and how these are unaffected by the addition of the wavelength switching functionality, i.e. linewidth, switching time, SMSR and transient frequency error. Next generation networks will move from physical path managed optical networks to logical wavelength managed networks where, efficient utilisation of the network on the wavelength level will be demanded. Fast and robust switching of the wavelengths is a key technological requirement for delivering on this.

10 Gb/sec transmission experiments with a separate 75 Mb/s FSK optical label

Several network testbeds use optical labels as a means of routing data through a network. The EU funded IST project STOLAS is producing one such network testbed which uses an optical label carried by a frequency shift keyed (FSK) modulation of the optical carrier at 75 Mb/s as an orthogonal channel to the 10 Gb/s intensity modulation used to carry the data. This paper presents the results of some transmission experiments on one of the laser transmitters used to supply the IM and FSK modulated signal within the network. In particular the paper investigates the cross-talk between the two theoretically orthogonal modulation channels of IM and FSK and the effect on bit error rate (BER).