Toshio MORIOKA

NTT Network Innovation Laboratories, NTT Corporation, 1-1 Hikari-no-oka, Yokosuka, Kanagawa, 239-0847 Japan

(Received March 2, 2004; Accepted April 16, 2004)

Recent progress in ultrafast and wideband all-optical processing technologies to realize flexible and transparent optical time-division multiplexing (OTDM)/wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) photonic networks is reviewed covering ultrafast OTDM technologies handling more than 100 Gbit/s per wavelength channel and wideband WDM technologies handling more than 1000 wavelength channels over the 200 nm range.

Key words: optical time-division multiplexing, wavelength division multiplexing, multiplexing, demultiplexing, wavelength conversion