Optical Networking

The rapidly increasing demand for downloads of videos over the internet and to 3G mobile phones combined with the success of Fiber-to-the-Home services is rapidly driving the market for new video networks. To support this expansion, manufactures of optical networking modules need components that are flexible, reliable, and cost competitive. That’s where DLP® technology comes in.

At the heart of every DLP® system is an optical semiconductor known as the Digital Micromirror Device (DMD), which consists of a rectangular array of up to two million hinge-mounted mirrors. Each mirror is microscopic in size; measuring less a one-fifth the width of a human hair. While the DMD has historically been used for data and video projectors, it is also well suited to a number of important optical networking functions, such as Reconfigurable Optical Add Drop Multiplexors (ROADMS), Wavelength Selective Switches, Variable Optical Attenuators, and Optical Performance monitors. The DMD brings a number of benefits to these applications:

• With many mirrors per lamda, or wavelength, a DLP-based solution can be easily reconfigured for different channel plans
• Since the DMD is inherently polarization independent, optical system design is simplified and the system is future proof for standards like 100 GbE that may use polarization to carry data.
• Since the DMD is inherently a digital device, it is not susceptible to issues resulting from analog drift and is more robust in the face of vibration.
• Switching speeds in the 10’s of microseconds (versus milliseconds for the competition) means that networks can rapidly reconfigure to adjust for a failure somewhere in the network.

End Equipment Solutions

• DLP Switched Blade Grating
• DLP Technology Applications in Optical Networking