Abstract

Various kinds of all-optical time-domain signal-processing technologies are now being developed for constructing extremely-high-speed optical time-division-multiplexing (TDM) fiber transmission systems.^1-3 The technologies include highspeed transform-limited (TL) optical-pulse generation, all-optical multiplexing/demultiplexing (MUX/DEMUX),^4-7 linear or soliton pulse transmission, optical timing extraction, and alloptical repeating/regenerating. Since these photonic technologies are extremely fast, they are expected to be applied to next-generation lightwave communications networks. Here, recent progress on very-high-speed optical TDM transmission at data rates as high as 100 Gbit/s is introduced together with the essential photonic technologies.

© 1994 Optical Society of America