Are you involved with
purchasing, designing or engineering next generation optical networks?
Fibre optic systems are
becoming ever more complex and sophisticated which means many new issues
to consider. Here’s a few of the issues you may come across:
links that were
built for SDH and SONET rings are being used at higher data rates
per channel
many new fibre types
are being pushed by the major fibre manufacturers including Corning,
OFS, Prysmian (Pirelli), Alcatel, Draka Comteq
new fibre standards
are being published including G.652.C & D, G.655.B & C and G.656
dark fibre links are
being constructed from whatever fibres are available, which could
include earlier versions of ITU-T recommendations that relate to the
current G.652.A or G.652.B or which may not even have PMD
specifications defined at all
migration has
occurred from PDH to SDH and SONET
data rates are
increasing from 2.5Gb/s to 10Gb/s and 40Gb/s
SDH systems are
being upgraded from STM-16 to STM-64 and STM-256
SONET systems being
upgraded from OC-48 to OC-192 and OC-768
Ethernet systems are
being deployed at 1Gb/s, 10Gb/s (and 100Gb/s is coming along)
dispersion and
dispersion management are key issues for these higher data rates
vendors are pushing
the merits of optical versus electronic dispersion compensation
schemes
new modulation formats are being deployed that may be more
dispersion tolerant or bring other benefits – these include RZ, DPSK,
DQPSK and multi-level modulation schemes
the ITU-T Optical
Transport Network (OTN) facilitates directly IP-networks for VoIP,
Video on Demand (VOD)
long haul networks
extending DWDM channel counts to cover the L-band from 1565nm up to
1625nm and well as the conventional C-band from 1530nm to 1565nm
metro networks are deploying CWDM systems that include the S-band
too from 1450nm to 1530nm and the O-band and E-band too if fibre
performance allows
triple-play
networks are being deployed for voice, video and data, with the
fourth dimension of mobility being added for quad-play
Agile Optical
Networks being deployed with wavelength routing reconfigurable
optical add-drop multiplexers (ROADMs)
transitions are
being made from point-to-point links that made up SDH and SONET
rings into meshed networks and optically switched networks
Next Generation
Networks are being standardised by the ITU and deployed by telcos
If you need to understand all the
technology involved with modern fibre optic systems that drive the
requirements for fibre characterisation then you need to attend OTT's
Certified Optical Network Engineer training programme.
