Abstract

Future telecommunication networks operating on wide areas will have to support a total traffic of the order of some Tb/s. It is likely that such a huge capacity can be obtained by means of the Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) transmis sion and of devices as Optical Cross Connects (OXC) and Optical Add Drop Multiplexers (OADM). The N × 40 Gb/s transmission seems to be close to field testing and it is particularly suitable for these networks, even though the design requires many ingenious contrivances. One of the most critical issue is the lightpath assignment¹ since several transmission impairments can be present.² In fact it is likely that the connection among the nodes will be based on G.652 fibres, that are largely installed in many countries although the high chromatic dispersion requires particular compensating techniques.

© 2002 Optical Society of America