electrical engineering from the University of Santa Clara, Santa Clara, CA, and in 1975, he started his graduate ... at a high school. In 1979, he joined Tele ...
IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 3, NO. 5, OCTOBER 1997
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Introduction to the Issue on Nonlinear Devices for Optical Communication
T
HE ALL-OPTICAL communication network is a vision of a network where information is transmitted from sender to receiver as optical signals without intermediate transformations to the electrical domain for amplification, regeneration, switching, or processing. The practical realization of the vision is still a challenging project for the future, and may in fact never be a competitive solution if the term all-optical is taken too litterally. However, the fiber optics networks of the future will undoubtedly make increasing use of nonlinear electrooptical components to perform a variety of all-optical functions. Examples include wavelength conversion in wavelength-division multiplexed (WDM)-based networks, signal gating and reshaping, switching and routing. This special issue is dedicated to the principles and applications of such nonlinear devices. The devices of interest are active, based on semiconductor gain media, or passive, based on fibers. As mirrored by the respective papers, the research covers the entire spectrum from basic device physics to systems applications. The most widely researched nonlinear device is the semiconductor optical amplifier which is represented in the present special issue by seven papers. The main topic is the study of four-wave mixing (FWM) with applications to, e.g., wavelength conversion in WDM communication networks, midspan spectral inversion for dispersion compensation, demultiplexing in time-division multiplexed (TDM) systems, and optical sampling. Wavelength conversion by cross gain modulation and cross-phase modulation (XPM) is discussed in two papers, and one paper deals with the dynamics of gain clamped semiconductor amplifiers.
Publisher Item Identifier S 1077-260X(97)09305-2.
Nonlinear fibers are addressed in the context of soliton switching and regeneration and of the use of fiber gratings. The considered switching elements are nonlinear optical loop mirrors with or without internal fiber gratings, twin-core fiber couplers, birefringent optical fibers and long period fiber gratings. The switching techniques are discussed in four papers. Two papers describe applications of bistable laser diodes, and one deals with wave mixing in laser diodes. The systems concept of WDM to TDM conversion by all optical means is described in the last paper of the issue. A close look at the state of the art in nonlinear electrooptic devices as presented in this Special Issue reveals significant achievements and fast maturing device technologies ready to serve in advanced networks. At the same time, nonlinear devices serve as superb tools for basic studies, of for example, semiconductor waveguides with gain, where many questions related mainly to dynamics and noise are still awaiting answers.
GADI EISENSTEIN,1 Guest Editor Department of Electrical Engineering Technion—Israel Institute of Technology Haifa 32000, Israel BJARNE TROMBORG, Guest Editor Tele Danmark R&D UPTI DK-2630 Taastrup, Denmark 1 On sabbatical from August 1997 to June 1998 at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455 USA.
1077–260X/97$10.00 1997 IEEE
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IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 3, NO. 5, OCTOBER 1997
Gadi Eisenstein was born in Haifa, Israel, on June 20, 1949. He received the B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Santa Clara, Santa Clara, CA, and in 1975, he started his graduate studies at the University of Minnesota under Prof. K. Champlin and the late Prof. A. Van der Ziel. His Ph.D. work dealt with specialized Schottky barrier detectors for far-infrared radiation. In 1980, he joined Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, NJ, where he worked for nine years in the field of devices and concepts for optical fiber communication making significant contributions in the areas of optical amplifiers, short optical pulse generators, and very fast systems. In 1989, he joined the Technion—Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel, where he is a Professor of Electrical Engineering. He is one of the founders of the Barbara and Norman Seiden Center for Advanced Optoelectronics Research. In fall 1997, he returned to the University of Minnesota where he is spending a sabbatical year from August 1997 until June 1998.
Bjarne Tromborg was born in Denmark in 1940. He received the M.Sc. degree in physics and mathematics from the Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1968. From 1968 to 1977, he was a Research Associate at NORDITA and the Niels Bohr Institute. His research field was theoretical elementary particle physics, in particular analytic S-matrix theory and electromagnetic corrections to hadron scattering. From 1977 to 1979, he taught at a high school. In 1979, he joined Tele Danmark Research (at that time named TFL) in Hørsholm, where he was Head of the Optical Communications Department from 1987 until the end of 1995. As Head, he established semiconductor and optics laboratories for fabrication and characterisation of laser diodes and for communication systems experiments. In 1996, he was Project Manager in Tele Danmark R&D in charge of introducing computerbased tools for planning of telecommunications networks, and in 1997, he has been with Technion—Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel, as Visiting Professor. Since 1991, he has been Adjunct Professor in physics at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen. He has coauthored a research monograph on dispersion theory, and authored or coauthored more than 70 scientific journal or conference publications. His research interests include physics and technology of optoelectronic devices with focus on noise and dynamics of semiconductor lasers. Mr. Tromborg has been TPC member of a number of international conferences. He is/was Short Course Chair at CLEO/Europe ’96, European Chair of the TPC for ISLC ’96, member of the Scientific Council of the Microelectronics Center, Technical University of Denmark, 1992–1995, of the board of the Materials Center for Microelectronics, Technical University of Denmark, 1992–1996, of the board of the Danish Optical Society, 1992–1994, of the board of the Photonics Center, Royal Institute of Technology, Kista, Sweden, 1995 to the present, and of the Danish Natural Science Research Council, 1995 to the present. He received the Electroprize from the Danish Society of Engineers in 1981 and was awarded the Lady Davis Visiting Professorship for nine months at Technion, Haifa, Israel, in 1997.
