AVS 46th International Symposium
    Electronic Materials and Processing Division Wednesday Sessions
       Session EM-WeA

Invited Paper EM-WeA1
Materials and Devices for Optical Communication

Wednesday, October 27, 1999, 2:00 pm, Room 608

Session: Novel Materials and Devices for Computation and Communication
Presenter: K.J. Vahala, California Institute of Technology
Correspondent: Click to Email
The performance requirements of commercial lightwave communication systems have systematically exceeded expectations for over a decade. Driven by explosive Internet growth, current commercial trunk-line systems are approaching 1 Terabit/sec of aggregate bandwidth on a single optical fiber and use as many as 80 channels (wavelengths). Optical switching, channel add/drop, wavelength conversion, and other functions are needed in these systems and there is a premium on functions that can be all-optical and preferably fiber based. This talk will over view some of the materials and devices that are now finding use in telecom systems. It will also suggest some performance issues in these systems that are material-related.