Demonstration of a rapidly tunable optical time-division multiple-access coder

An experimental demonstration of a variable-integer delay line optical time-division multiple-access coder with fast reconfiguration time is presented for 64 100-Mb/s channels, using 2*2 integrated-optic directional couplers and fiber delay lines. A simple control sequence for setting the state of the coder is presented. The 26-dB insertion loss of the experimental coder described would reduce the potential size of the network by a factor of 400, which is clearly unacceptable. The coder insertion loss is reduced by integrating all of the stages together on a single substrate, including the directional couplers and the waveguide delays. In this way, the implementation of an optical time-division multiaccess coder capable of addressing 1000 1-Gb/s channels with subnanosecond reconfiguration time may be feasible.<>