Broadband optical communications systems require the technology of high-capacity, high- information-bandwidth optical fiber transmission. While one can push TDM to higher and higher speeds (e.g., 40 Gb/s) to increase the information transmission capacity in an optical fiber system, a well-known alternative approach is to use the technique of multi-wavelength multiple-optical-channel transmission, or, wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM). This talk will briefly review recent advances reported in the published literature on WDM and discuss potential optical fiber system and network applications of WDM technologies in optical communications.
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