To date, numerous switching technologies have been developed including
micro electro-mechanical system (MEMS), lithium niobate, semiconductor
optical amplifier (SOA) gate, beamsteering, liquid crystal, bubblejet, and so on [1].
In particular, two- and three-dimensional MEMS designs have gained the most attention,
yielding submillisecond switching times and low crosstalk levels. However,
port count scalability remains a key challenge (see also Mesh Switching) and future
integration strategies are expected to provide much improvement here.
202 Chapter 8
Optical Network Architectures
Component advances have led to major evolutions in optical network element (ONE)
designs over the past decade. In turn, these have enabled much-improved service provisioning
paradigms at the network layer, as shown in Figure 8.3. As a result, DWDM
is now a multibillion dollar market that has seen tremendous growth in the metro/
regional and long-haul networking sectors. In fact, this technology has largely usurped
legacy SONET/SDH as the main underlying transport solution. Current ONE systems
offer a wide range of capabilities and are becoming increasingly flexible and agile
(see Table 8.
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