Optical Networking Best Practices Handbook

13.7. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

Optical wireless systems offer the promise of extremely high bandwidth subject only to eye-safety regulations, and the increased congestion and sometimes cost of the RF spectrum makes this resource increasingly attractive. This chapter describes an approach to fabricating optical wireless transceivers that use devices and components that are suitable for integration, and relatively well-developed techniques to produce them. The tracking transmitter and receiver components currently being assembled have the potential for use in the architecture described in this chapter as well as in other network topologies [2].

All the individual optical, electronic, and optoelectronic components have been fabricated and successfully tested, and are in the process of undertaking the flip-chip bonding required for the integrated components described here. Promising initial results indicate that a scaled version of this demonstrator should allow high-bandwidth optical wireless channels to be used in a wide range of environments and applications [2].

In the current telecom environment of restricted capital budgets and ever-increasing demand, carriers need wavelength-switching architectures that can scale economically from small to large port counts without forklift upgrades of existing equipment. 1-D MEMS-based wavelength-switching platforms offer highly scalable solutions with excellent optical properties. Additionally, the simple digital control and fabrication of ...