Hardware paradigm shifts in the optical communication infrastructure with three “M technologies”

Over the last twenty years, optical communication technology has provided a three orders of magnitude increase in transmission capacity per fiber, and achieved a Tera bit/s infrastructure. Even during the current economic recession, data traffic has continued to increase at more than 40% per year. This means that in twenty years, the backbone transmission capacity will have to support in excess of Peta bit/s per fiber, and the core network will have to support an Exa bit/s throughput at home. Terabit/s access handling 3D super-high definition videos will be a reality. However, the maximum transmission capacity of a single strand of fiber is fast approaching its limit (~100 Tera bit/s) owing to the available optical fiber bandwidth and optical power input to the fiber. To exceed these limits and to develop breakthrough technologies enabling this giant leap, we must develop extremely advanced transmission (EXAT) technologies such as a multi-level modulation format, multi-core fibers, and mode division multiplexing using MIMO technology from wireless communication. The multi-level modulation format, multi-core fibers, and mode division multiplexing are known collectively as the three "M Technologies". I shall describe recent challenges and efforts toward achieving these three M technologies with terabit/s OTDM technology using ultrashort optical pulses of less than 1 ps.