Ultrafast photonic devices for tera-bit/s optical TDM/WDM communications

This tutorial reviews ultrafast all-optical photonic devices indispensable for developing future tera-bits transmission systems employing optical time-division multiplexing (OTDM) and wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) technology. Focus is placed on various key technologies including OTDM/WDM signal pulse generation, all-optical multiplexing/demultiplexing, optical timing extraction, and optical sampling technique. Also their application to OTDM/WDM transmission experiments over several Tbit/s capacity will be introduced.