Ultra high bit rate all optical communication system

Abstract

A system that uses all optical elements for transmission, regeneration and reception of solitons in point-to-point, broadcast, ring and multi-user trunk type communication systems. Soliton pulses from an optical clock source are modulated by optical data pulses in an optical modulator producing a modulated channel of data pulses. Several channels are combined by an optical multiplexer into a network optical bit stream. This stream is carried by an optical fiber and one or more of optical regenerators which recover the system clock and regenerate the signal with the recovered system clock rather than just amplifying the signal. Each of the regenerators can, in addition to regenerating the data, act as part of a data drop or insert node in a ring network where the node can synchronously remove data from or insert data into the stream. Intermediate nodes can include packet drop/replace nodes if the network is a packet type network. The destination can include an optical demultiplexer which demultiplexes the network stream into the individual channels, an optical clock recovery system that recovers the clock of the system and a receiver that receives the pulses of one of the demultiplexed channels. The system can also include optical logic for decoding and routing optical packets.