Abstract —Recent advances in the development of photonic switching and transmission systems that exploit high and low index contrast integration materials are reported. Micro-ring resonators, delayed interferometers and all-optical wavelength converters integrated in Si3N4-SiO2 and silica-on-silicon substrates are used for the regeneration and wavelength routing of amplitude and phase modulated optical signals. Micro-photonics is the key for elegantly squeezing terabits into a few mm 2 with optimum yield and at a low development cost. Index Terms —high-speed transmission, optical regeneration, photonic routing, all-optical wavelength conversion, photonic integration I. I NTRODUCTION Today we are witnessing a resurgence of the growth and increasing customer demand for capacity in optical networks. A major factor for this growth is an unprecedented deployment of optical access networks worldwide for providing ample bandwidth to the end-user in the >50Mb/s region. In this rationale, the growth rates of end-users take new meaning, compared to those in 2000. Before the telecom bubble, penetration rates in excess of 100% reported, fuelled massive technology investments in the core network. However, these growth rates always translated to new users with bandwidth of a few kb/s, since the access network was just not ready. Moreover, broadband applications were still in their infancy and the telecom world was still searching for the “killer application”. The situation is very different today, with each new data connection translating to fast internet with combined voice and video. These new developments in the access networks are now exerting pressure on the metro and core networks that inevitably will always be “out-of-step” with the access networks, given that the genuine and sustainable market drivers for bandwidth are originating from the end-users. Photonic integrated circuits are expected to play a central role in the development of new hardware to be included in next generation telecommunication systems.
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