Short Courses

SC103 Fast Reconfigurable WDM Optical Networks

Sunday, February 24, 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Daniel Blumenthal; Univ. of California at Santa Barbara, USA

Level: Intermediate (Prior knowledge of topic is necessary to appreciate course material)

Course Description
Future advances in optical switching technology and the need for networks that support real-time reconfiguration and virtual circuit and packet switched services will drive the requirement for faster optical routing, new signaling techniques, data rate and format transparency, and new approaches to network state and channel monitoring. This course provides an overview of fast reconfigurable WDM optical networks, techniques and architectures, functional building blocks, and underlying component technologies. Emphasis will be placed on architectures and techniques that support reconfigurability, fast routing, and optical burst and packet switching, including physical layer protocols. Building blocks that will be covered include reconfigurable add/drop multiplexers, photonic switches and routers, fast tunable wavelength converters and lasers, all-optical regenerators, optical label swapping and packet/burst switches and underlying buffer technologies, and optical performance monitoring. Issues related to WDM transmission in fast reconfigurable systems will be covered.

Benefits and Learning Objectives
This course should enable you to:

• Evaluate technologies in designing and deploying optical networks and future burst and packet switch technologies.
• Evaluate and design different approaches for optical network architectures and design principles.
• Decide which technologies are applicable to designing reconfigurable optical networks.

Intended Audience
Knowledge of basic engineering principles and network principles will be useful. Basic knowledge of fiber optics is also of use.

Instructor Biography
Daniel Blumenthal is a professor in the department of ECE at UCSB and is a co-founder of Calient Networks. He has co-authored more than 220 papers in the field of optical networks and related technologies. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and recipient of a PECASE Award, a NSF NYI Award, and an ONR YIP Award. He is an associate editor for IEEE PTL and has served as associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Communications.