640 Gb/s ultra-high-speed optical interconnection system using wide-channel-spacing wavelength division multiplexing

Abstract

A 640 Gb/s ultra-high speed optical switch interconnection system based on wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) is proposed as a Tbit/s ATM switch interconnection system for future B-ISDN. The proposed optical interconnection system uses WDM in the switch interconnection to avoid interconnection limitation. The system consists of 8 wavelengths (each carrying a 10 Gb/s signal), eight optical transmitter modules (Tx), and an 8/spl times/8 arrayed waveguide (AWG) optical router which interconnects the 8/spl times/8 80 Gb/s WDM signal and 8 wavelengths receiver modules (Rx). Using a highly statistical WDM optical link, the proposed system can attain nearly non-blocking ATM switch interconnection. There are several advantages to the proposed optical interconnection system. First, by adopting a arrayed waveguide filter with a wide-channel-spacing (525 GHz), the system has a wide temperature margin of 10 degrees. Second, by setting a clock data recovery circuit in each Rx module, each 10 Gb/s highway interconnect unit switch can function independently. As a result, the proposed system is highly scalable. We fabricate an optical interconnection prototype system and succeed in demonstrating a 640 Gb/s optical interconnection. The proposed optical interconnection system can be applied to realize future broadband ATM networks.