Photonic network R&D activities in Japan-current activities and future perspectives

R&D activities on photonic networks in Japan are presented. First, milestones in current ongoing R&D programs supported by Japanese government agencies are introduced, including long-distance and wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) fiber transmission, wavelength routing, optical burst switching (OBS), and control-plane technology for IP backbone networks. Their goal was set to evolve a legacy telecommunications network to IP-over-WDM networks by introducing technologies for WDM and wavelength routing. We then discuss the perspectives of so-called PHASE II R&D programs for photonic networks over the next 5 years until 2010, by focusing on the report that has been recently issued by the Photonic Internet Forum (PIF), a consortium that has major carriers, telecom vendors, and Japanese academics as members. The PHASE II R&D programs should serve to establish a photonic platform to provide abundant bandwidth on demand, at any time on a real-time basis, through the customer´s initiative to promote bandwidth-rich applications, such as grid computing, real-time digital-cinema streaming, medical and educational applications, and network storage in e-commerce.