The potential of photonic networks

Simple and flexible photonic networks will provide the basic technologies for the telecommunication networks of the 21st century, broadband-ISDN, and fiber-to-the-home. It is recognized that SDH and ATM systems have much difficulty increasing the throughput by electrical signal processing technologies, such as signal processing speed, latency, and so on. Photonic networks have the potential to solve these problems and to construct ultra-high-capacity, simple, and flexible transport networks. This becomes very promising with the development of optical fiber amplifier and other new optical device technologies. This article reviews trends in optical transmission technologies and discusses the possibilities of the photonic network. Conceptual photonic network examples for the transport network, access network, and customer premises network considering the present network are shown. Future research items for constructing the photonic network are also discussed