Abstract

Abstract The technologies used in optical networks have evolved seamlessly over the past six decades. Optical fibers with extremely low loss and enormous bandwidth are used as the transmission medium, while semiconductor lasers and LEDs serve as optical sources, and the photodetectors – pin and avalanche photodiodes – are used to receive the optical signal at the destination nodes. The transmitted optical signal has to pass through a variety of network elements, which in turn need a wide range of passive and active devices, carrying out the necessary networking functionalities. For WDM optical networks, many of these tasks need to be accomplished in the optical domain itself in a wavelength-selective manner, calling for various types of WDM-based networking elements. In this chapter, we present a comprehensive description of the optical and optoelectronic devices that are used in today’s optical networks. (137 words)

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