Photonic access system based on wavelength domain techniques for ATM gigabit switching applications

A photonic access node architecture is described, illustrating in detail the design of the traffic concentrator and of the multiplexer, basic subsystems of the photonic access concentrator. An implementation example is outlined, where at 128 user lines at 622 Mb/s the access is given to four outlets at 2.488 Gb/s. The implementation, based on the systematic use of the cell wavelength-encoding, uses either well-known components, such as Fabry-Perot filters, fiber delay lines, splitters and combiners, or recently developed devices, such as high-speed optical gates and tunable filters and lasers