Page 2 - Optical Transport Networks

Optical Multiplexing Introduction

In recent years Fiber Optic communication technologies have evolved at a rapid pace in order to support our increasingly data driven society. Many of the advancements have been in the area of finding clever ways to increase the transmission capacity of the existing fiber network infrastructure. Since optical multiplexing is a useful technique to accomplish this, researchers have explored optimizing optical multiplexing in time (TDM), space (SMX) , polarization or phase (PDM) and wavelength (WDM).

WDM (Wavelength-Division Multiplexing)

While some of the aforementioned multiplexing techniques (in particular spatial Multiplexing) hold great promise for future applications, this article focuses primarily on Wavelength-Division Multiplexing (WDM) as it is the most widely used by SanSpot.com's applications, solutions and customers. In Essence WDM creates virtual fiber pathways over a single fiber strand by combining 2 or more wavelengths (i.e. colors) of laser