OCDMA, electronic bottleneck, and challenges for fiber-optic communications

Optical fibre links have a great capacity potential for the point-to-point data transport. This aggregate data throughput has been further improved by implementation of data multiplexing techniques such as DWDM, OTDM, and OCDM. However fibre link capabilities becomes severely limited at the fiber links end points where the routing and switching takes place by the electronic serial data processing abilities of current CMOS electronics. Given a future where networks will need to perform ultra-high speed serial data processing all optically there will be basic requirements for all optical devices capable of performing at data rates well beyond is possible electronically today. To overcome this electronic bottleneck we have developed an ultrafast all optical photonic switch which does not suffer from the currier recovery time limitations affecting all optical switches based on Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers.