Evolution of optical transport technologies: from SONET/SDH to WDM

It took roughly 10 years for the transport network industry to migrate from PDH to SONET. As this technology swap comes to an end, WDM technology is dawning, promising to revolutionize the network industry, with the possibility of transport bit rates above 10 Gb/s as well as transparency to signal encodings. However, a new wave of equipment upgrade is unlikely to happen as current SONET equipment is just beginning to pay off for its large investment. Thus, in years to come, SONET technology, the current standard for optical fiber access, will have to make room for WDM technology in a gradual way. On its part, WDM equipment must be developed to be backward compatible with SONET technology. This article discusses the requirements and issues involved in making WDM technology interoperable with SONET legacy equipment, as well as the evolution path toward a transparent optical transport network.