CONCEPTUAL SURVEY OF PHASE MODULATION BASED WAVELENGTH REGISTERED NETWORKS

The implementation of a dense wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) b ased wide-area network inevitably involves a large number of semicondu ctor lasers requiring particular temperature and driving current contr ol. The concept of a novel multiwavelength network that uses only one laser source to generate all the carriers needed for the entire networ k is investigated. The central idea is to use a stable reference laser to generate two sets of optical carriers as the 'carrier supplies' fo r all network nodes: one set for signal transmission and the other for signal reception. A promising feature of the proposed network is the wavelength registration, that is, all carrier wavelengths are unambigu ously identified. This special feature is of importance for a standard wide-area multiwavelength network. Optical phase modulation is extens ively employed in the carrier generation as well as in information del ivery. A 40-wavelength network is considered with each wavelength carr ying 20 phase-modulated microwave subcarriers, a total throughput of 1 60 Gbit/s per single-mode fibre is estimated.