Power Controlled Ultrafast Wavelength Shifting

Abstract

Future optical communication system will probably be a mixture of wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) and optical time domain multiplexing (OTDM). It was shown recently that AlGaAs used at photon energies below the half-band gap is capable of performing OTDM functions[1]. In an OTDM system, signals are alloted different time slots, while in a WDM system, more than one wavelength are used to carry the signals. Hence there is a need to have wavelength shifting components to route signals. Furthermore, if OTDM and WDM are combined, the wavelength shifting will have to be ultrafast.