Component Developers Rethink the Fundamentals

by Michael Lawton fibers.org News, 20 Jun 2005 Throughout the 1990s, the market for fibre-optic communications was driven by dramatic growth in demand for long-haul capacity -- growth that resulted in a need for components/subsystems with higher and higher serial bit rates. At the same time, the full-out commercialization of DWDM technology allowed serial capacity to be multiplied up to one hundredfold through the use of multiwavelength transmission. In turn, the roll-out of DWDM was enabled by the invention of the erbium-doped fibre amplifier, a technology that supports the amplification of multiple signals without conversion to the electrical domain, thereby allowing operators to upgrade their networks by simply installing equipment at remote terminals and not at repeater sites. The development of DWDM has led to advances in capacity such that it is now possible to support bandwidths up to 1 Tbit/s over a single fibre. The result? Raw long-haul capacity is no longer the main driver in today's optical comms market. Read the article