High-capacity lightwave local are networks

The author presents an overview of fundamental considerations that guide and motivate research in this area. He explores the relationship between the bandwidth of the fiber, the available power and the loss in various network designs, and the throughput of networks as limited by the medium-access techniques and control mechanisms. He discusses two approaches to opening up the bottleneck that seem particularly promising. The first, multihop, uses a novel network architecture to achieve high capacity with existing devices; the second, wavelength division multiple access (WDMA), emphasizes new devices in a relatively conventional architecture. Noting that the primary disadvantage of the bus topology, poor energy efficiency, could be overcome with a suitable optical amplifier to compensate for the high signal attenuation in the network, the author discusses one of the most promising candidates, the traveling-wave semiconductor amplifier. He also discusses medium-access considerations.<>