Wavelength division multiplexing for local area networks

Wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) is rapidly becoming the technology of choice for high-capacity optical networks because it provides a graceful upgrade path to accessing the enormous fibre bandwidth, as well as having advantages in terms of scalability and network management. The deployment of components such as WDM add-drop multiplexers, arrayed-waveguide routers and optical cross-connects will enable signals to be controlled, selected, routed and switched on the basis of wavelength. This manipulation of signals entirely in the optical domain promises to make networks more flexible, more reliable and easier to manage, resulting in reduced costs to consumers. Recent commercial advances in WDM technology have been driven by demand in long-haul transmission and wide-area networking. It seems reasonable to suppose that as costs fall, WDM will bring similar benefits to smaller-scale networks such as customer-access networks, metropolitan-area networks (MAN), campus networks and local-area networks (LAN). In this presentation we will discuss some of the research that has been carried out in the past few years on the use of WDM for local-area networking. We will also present recent results from our own work on the MAWSON (Metropolitan Area Wavelength Switched Optical Network) WDM network demonstrator.