The changing trends

of optical
communication

Can Stock Photo/Anterovium

I
Sudhir K. Routray

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPOT.2013.2279908

Date of publication: 7 January 2014

28

n the early 1980s, optical communication

emerged as a possible means of practical
communication. However, there were
many bottlenecks and short-comings.
There was no optical amplifier at that
time. Every node or repeater used to have
reamplificaton, reshaping, and retiming
(3R) regeneration, and all the processing
was done in the electrical domain. The
separation between two adjacent repeaters
was well within 20 km. The early trends of
optical communication until the end of
1980s are shown in Table 1, which were
very different from todays mainstream
optical communication.
Three decades later, there are scores
of changing trends, which gave optical
communication a completely new shape.
Be it in the high-speed arena, the core or
the access, or the optical burst switching,
optical communication has created a
dominant position in the market. The
demand for bandwidth has been mono0278-6648/14/$31.002014IEEE

tonically increasing since the Internet

arrived in 1989. In the last eight to
ten years it is skyrocketing, which was
hardly expected in the 1980s. All this has
become possible through the high-speed
coreopticalnetworkssupportedby
appropriate enabling technologies at all
critical junctures.
In developed countries, the demand for
high-bandwidth applications is increasing
very fast. Due to free Web broadcasting
and various types of digital streaming,
bandwidth demand has grown exponentially in recent years. From Fig. 1, it is clear
that the trend of bandwidth demand is
almost exponential across the world. Since
the arrival of the Internet, it is catching up
to what Jakob Nielsen predicted in 1998.
In developing countries, its growth rate
is also very high. Of course, developed
countries are still a long way ahead as far as
the individual Internet bandwidth per user
is concerned. Figure 2 shows how the
IEEE POTENTIALS

Table 1. Early trends of optical communications.

Table 2. List of acronyms used.

Breakthrough

1R

1966

Charles K. Kao informs the Institution of Electrical

Engineers that fiber loss is fewer than 20 dB/km

Reamplification (only amplification without reshaping

and retiming)

2R

Reamplification and reshaping

1977

Early telephone service through optical fibers by AT&T

3R

Re-amplification, reshaping, and retiming

1980

First transatlantic telecommunication (TAT) fiber-optic

communication cable TAT-8 deployment started

AON

All-optical network

1987

EDFA was developed in the University of Southampton

AT&T

American Telephone and Telegraph Company

1988

TAT-8 started service at 1.3 nm

BER

Bit-error rate

CATV

Cable television

CON

Cognitive optical networking

DSL

Digital subscriber line

DSP

Digital signal processing

EDFA

Erbium-doped fiber amplifier

EON

Elastic optical network

EPON

Ethernet passive optical network

FSO

Free-space optics

FTTx

Fiber to the x (x for curb/block/home, etc.)

GPON

Gigabit passive optical network

ICT

Information and communication technology

IEE

Institution of Electrical Engineers

IM/DD

Intensity modulation/direct detection

IP

Internet protocol

IPTV

Internet protocol television

ITU

International Telecommunication Union

LH

Long haul

MIMO

Multiple-input, multiple-output

OCED

Organization for Economic Cooperation and

Development

OEO/(O-E-O)

Optical-electrical-optical

OFDM

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing

OFDMA

Orthogonal frequency division multiple access

OLT

Optical line terminal

ONU

Optical networking unit

OOK

Onoff keying

OTN

Optical transport network

OXC

Optical cross connect

PON

Passive optical network (TDM-, WDM-, G-,

E-, etc. are its varieties)

QAM

Quadrature amplitude modulation

ROADM

Reconfigurable optical add/drop modulator

TAT

Trans-Atlantic telecommunication

90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0

11

10

20

09

20

08

20

07

20

06

20

05

20

04

20

03

20

20

20

20

02

Global
Developing
Developed

01

Global Internet Bandwidth

(Tb/s)

Year

Year
Fig. 1 International bandwidth demand for the Internet
(reproduced from the ITU data).

Average International Internet Bandwidth

per Internet User in 2011 (Kb/s)

ro
pe
Eu

ld
or
W

as

Am
er

ic

IS
C

fic
ci
Pa
&

ia
As

Ar

ab

St

Af

at

ric

es

100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0

Fig. 2 The average Internet bandwidth per user (reproduced

from the ITU data).

average Internet bandwidth per user is

distributed in different areas around the
world. Europe is far ahead of others in this
regard. The global average bandwidth per
user was almost 35 Kb/s in 2011, as per
ITU (see Table 2 for all acronyms) statistics. The rest of the world, except Europe,
had a smaller average bandwidth per user
than this. The reason behind such a big
gap is the presence or absence of a large
number of high-speed core optical transport networks.

TDM
Time division multiplexing
In this article,
TON
Transparent optical network
these significant
changing trends
ULH
Ultra-long haul
of optical comVoIP
Voice over Internet protocol
munication are
WDM
Wavelength division multiplexing
presented, which
make it a technology of the
foundation building. Out of many such
future. The recent phase of growth is
changes, the main five trends are
driven by user demand, business
described here, which have made it an
values, and innovation, whereas the
attractive and accessible technology of
era until the 1990s was the phase of

January/February 201429

Enabling technologies
Total
Electrical
Fabric
O/E/O O/E

Total
Optical
Fabric
E/O O/E/O

Opaque Switching

Transparent Switching

Fig. 3 Opaque and transparent switching in the optical networks.

thepresentandthefuture.These
trends are:
toward transparency
toward coherence
toward quantum systems
toward every home access
toward advanced wireless technologies.

Toward transparency
Transparency in optical communication means the absence of optical-electrical-optical conversions in the intermediate repeaters and nodes of the OTNs.
In other words, transparency is all-optical communication without any change
to the electrical form of the signal along
the transport channel (see Fig. 3). Based
on transparency, optical networks are of
three types. The first type is opaque, in
which the 3R [or at least reamplification
and reshaping (2R)] processing is done
at all the repeaters. The second type is
the translucent or the semi-opaque, in
which the 3R processing is done in some
of the repeaters, and at the rest, the processing may be just reamplification (1R)
or 2R. In the case of the third type, the
transparent optical networks, there is
simply 1R processing (with a few 2R
processing). Exceptions are found in the
case of very long range communications,
where a few (just one or two) intermediate nodes provide 3R processing to erase
the accumulated errors, nonlinearities,
and noises.
It is very much certain that the optical
transport networks will be made as
transparentaspossibleinthenear
future. However, some of them may stay
in the translucent form until the signal
processingintheopticaldomain
becomes as flexible as in the electrical
domain. Whatever may be the case, in
the ULH, transparency is the first choice.
Now, transparency made the OTNs and
all-opticalnetworkssynonymous.
Having seen all of these transformations,
the ITU has changed its standards to
include transparency in its new versions.
Most of the modern networks deployed
are transparent, whether local or metro30

politan or long haul or ULH. For instance,

thefastestcommunicationservice
between Europe and the United States
provided by the Hibernia Network is a
great example of a modern transparent
optical communication system. It takes
record-low 65 ms for a signal to travel
from New York to London along the
great-circle of Hibernia. Transformation
toward transparency is a bit slow for the
old optical networks deployed before
2000, due to the lack of flexibility to
handle the emerging traffic.

Motivation
Transparency provides many operational advantages. In TONs, links are
only provided with the optical amplifiers, which are commonly known as 1R.
There is no need for any 3R. It saves
costs and complexities. It can adapt to
the changes in the data rates and protocols. There is no need for providing
new fibers every now and then for
increasing data rates. It reduces the
costs of data transmission (in terms of
costs per bit). The impairments that
appear at the receivers due to the
absence of 3R can be removed by other
new trends such as the digital-signalprocessing-based compensation methods and optical performance monitoring along the channel. Transparency in
the system gives great flexibility and the
ability to grow unlike the opaque and
translucent systems. Latency is low, as
all the switching are done in the optical
domain, and thus the ultra-fast systems
tend to be transparent.
The surging demand for bandwidth
can be handled through increased transparency and the optimum use of bandwidth. It is suitable for emerging IP services, such as VoIP, video on demand,
and digital streaming of different kinds.
These services are very much popular
due to their low cost and good quality of
services. Transparency is the basis of the
EONs of the future. EONs can save a
large amount of resources, and their longevity is higher.

The need for transparency was felt in

the early days of optical communication.
However, at that time there was no suitable technology. The main enabling technologies of transparent optical communication are effective and efficient amplifiers
(mainly EDFAs and Raman), multifaceted
ROADMs, monitoring and compensating
methods, and the smart and reliable
architecture of the OXCs. The absence of
3R regeneration leads to some degradation in the signal quality. Now, the monitoring and compensation techniques take
care of those issues effectively. Recently
proposed, OFDM-based optical communications systems are suitable for TONs
and EONs of the future.

Toward coherence
Coherent detection is very popular in
wireless communication. It was also tried
in optical communication in the 1980s. In
the early 1990s, the arrival of EDFAs closed
the doors for coherent detectors in optical
communication. However, it came back to
the optical arena in the new millennium
with new hopes and paradigms. Coherent
optical systems provide up to 20dB extra
gain over the IM/DD systems. Furthermore,
it is very efficient for high-performance
andhigh-data-ratesystems.Coherent
detectors created new application areas
for optical communication, which were
impossible by the common IM/DD detectors. These receivers facilitate the system
spectral efficiency to increase by several
folds. The bit-error rate of coherent systems is significantly higher than IM/DD
and some other detection systems used in
the optical domain. Coherence in optical
communication has come back to stay.
Out of the two commonly used coherent
detection techniques, such as homodyne
and heterodyne, the latter type is widely
used for optical communication systems.

Motivation
With better qualities and high data
rates, coherent systems promise much to
optical systems. In recent years, when the
quest for high spectral efficiency and high
data rates became intense, coherence was
the solution for the majority of such cases.
Optical modulation formats became a
popular area of research to feed the
coherent receivers. Ultrafast transmission
systems need smart detection techniques.
It is not possible to detect high-speed
pulses using the IM/DD transceivers.
However, coherent detectors are able to
detect multi-terabit/s traffic. It also facilitates the use of advanced modulation
IEEE POTENTIALS

schemes such as OFDM in optical communication, which in return provides several benefits such as spectral efficiency,
better quality of signal, and cost reduction. Coherent systems are able to accommodate the digital signal processing systems needed for the compensation
schemes and other improvements.

Enabling technologies
The availability of the components
and good-quality lasers at the source
make it possible to have coherent detectors in optical communication systems.
Developments in signal processing have
enabled the effective recovery of the optical signal at the receiving end with good
quality. With the emergence of optical
monitoring and compensation schemes at
both the source and the destination,
coherent systems achieved a new high.

Toward quantum systems

Significant developments in quantum
science led to the emergence of quantum communication. Quantum communication needs a medium for propagation. Optical fiber is perhaps the best
medium available for the quantum principles to be realized in communication.
Research on both quantum communication and quantum computing are being
carried out from optical perspectives.
Todays supercomputers have partial
optical processors. This trend is changing,
and by the year 2020, the majority of the
processing will be done in the optical
domain. The initiatives for a quantum
computer may materialize in the optical
domain. Recent research in this area is
quite impressive and indicates the importance of the optical systems in the future.
Quantum principles are the de-facto rules
of processors at the small scale. With
quantum computers, the conventional
cryptography would fail in seconds. Thus,
quantum cryptography is the only suitable option to handle that problem. Even
now, quantum cryptography is ahead of
others in this area. Having quantum computers around, the communication would
not depend on macro quantities such as
current and voltage; rather, only photons
can manage the data transmissions. In
that situation, just a photon counter
would serve as the receiver. Of course,
now ultrasensitive receivers are similar to
this but they need more than just one
photon for proper detection.

Motivation
In the case of quantum cryptography, quantum laws help the sender and

receiver to communicate safely with

their abilities to know whether they are
being spied or not. This is unique and
accurate, as any trial to get the information in the middle can be detected by
the change in the state of the photons
by the sender and receiver. In the future,
when quantum computers arrive, traditional cryptography will be replaced by
its quantum version. This is the way to
have a robust and reliable cryptosystem,
which can provide perfect data integrity.
The researchers of quantum computers
and other high-speed computers see the
principles of quantum optics as the
future of computing. Overall, quantum
principles are the limit of the extents to
which the systems can be pushed. This
is also the way to explore the limits of
communication and computing.

Enabling technologies
The main enabling technologies of
quantum optical applications are the
availability of the good photon generators (i.e., high-precision lasers), accurate
receivers, such as the photon counters,
and other high-quality components.
Advances in the quality of materials,
high-grade fibers, and high-precision
sensors are instrumental in the development of quantum systems. New varieties
of quantum devices and materials are
being introduced to the field every year.
Methods of photon generation for optical information processing have also
improved significantly.

Toward every home access

In the 1960s, when the optical communication perspectives were published,
or in the 1980s, when the fibers were
deployed for communication, hardly
anyone had thought that it would someday replace the popular copper wires of
that time. Even in the 1990s, no one
thought that fiber could be used for personal communications in common
houses. This was mainly due to the high
cost of optical communication over
other access technologies. That trend
has changed. Now, fiber is readily available in access networks as fiber to the x
(FTTx), with the x . representing a curb,
block, home, etc. DSLs and wireless
broadband technologies in the access
area are the main rivals of FTTx.
However, the quality, ability, and features of fibers are exemplary. FTTx is
robust in quality, high data rates, and
other performance-related features.
Many new varieties of the PONs are
being tested and implemented every

year around the world. The optical wireless communication technologies are
also being researched for the implementation of the FSO communication systems in the access area networks (i.e.,
end-user local networks).
Passive optical networks are the localarea networks that emerge/terminate
from the OLTs from/to the individual
homes. As shown in Fig. 4, the OXCs are
connected to the OLTs, which then connect to individual homes. The word passive is used to denote the absence of any
active elements between the OLT and the
final access point, the ONU. The active
element means mainly the amplifiers. The
lengths of the spans are chosen in such a
way that there is no need for any amplification between the links from the OLTs
and the ONUs. Splitters are used to separate the individual links from a common
link before reaching the ONUs. In some
PON systems, low-power amplifiers may
be used to increase the reach.
Today there are many varieties of
PONs available such as time division
multiplexing PON, gigabit PON, ethernet
PON, wavelength division multiplexing
PON, and OFDM-PON, among others.
Each has its own merits and limitations.
In order to improve overall performances, their hybrids are also being
tried and implemented in different parts
around the world, where the bandwidth
demand is high. The penetration of optical broadband in houses in different
countries (in the decreasing order of
percentages) is shown in Fig. 5. Japan
and South Korea lead the world in the
optical-fiber broadband penetration. The
penetrations of optical fibers in the
access network are on the rise in developing countries as well.

Motivation
There are emerging applications,
which create special motivation for the
PON technologies. The applications,
such as CATV and Internet protocol television need fiber as the medium for
proper quality of services. In comparison to the wireless broadband and DSL,
the quality of the signal is much better in
the optical fibers. Now, in many cities
around the world, the access area networks are optical due to their ability to
carry high-data-rate traffic. As mentioned previously, data streaming, social
networking, and Web broadcasting are
the major areas where bandwidth
demands are huge. For instance, for
CATV and video-on-demand applications, the recommended bandwidth has

January/February 201431

Local Network

Splitter

OLT

Transmitter/
Receiver

Backbone/Core Network

Transparent Optical Fiber

OXC

Receiver/
Transmitter

OLT

Splitter

OXC

All-Optical Switching
OXC

OXC

OXC

OXC

OXC

Fig. 4 The optical fibers local networks for home access. (It shows how the OXCs are connected with the OLTs and then to the
customer homes through the splitters.)

Fiber/Total Broadband Penetration in Houses (June 2011)

70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%

Sl

Ja

pa
n
ov Kor
ak ea
R
Sw ep
ed .
N en
o
D rwa
en y
m
Ic ark
el
H a
C un nd
ze g
ch ary
R
e
P
N or p.
et tu
he ga
rla l
n
Tu ds
rk
Fi ey
nl
an
d
Ita
Po ly
la
n
Sp d
Fr ain
an
Lu Aus ce
xe tra
m lia
bo
C urg
an
G a
Sw erm da
itz an
er y
la
Ire nd
la
Au nd
st
N ria
ew
G ...
re
Be ece
lg
iu
m

0%

Fig. 5 Optical fibers in home access (as a percentage of total households). (Courtesy of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Broadband Information Database.)

to be at least 2 Mb/s. This bandwidth

canbeprovidedbyDSLsystems.
However, the DSLs cannot guarantee the
futurechangesasthebandwidth
demand increases every month. At the
same time, PON is quite reliable, easy to
maintain, easy to install, and power efficient. Clearly, fiber is the most suitable
32

answer for the emerging applications

where huge bandwidth is needed.

Enabling technologies
For PON systems, the cost factor is
very important. The major obstacles for
the PONs were the prices of the ONUs
and fibers because ONU prices are paid

by the customers at the beginning of the

service. Initially, the ONU prices were in
thousands of U.S. dollars (or its equivalent in other currencies). However, the
availabilityofaffordablecomponents
and integrated photonic chips have brou
ghtthepricesdowntounder US$100
per unit.
IEEE POTENTIALS

Toward advanced
wireless technologies
Until the last few years, it was a
common perception that wireless communication and optical communication
have different trends in modulation,
demodulation, and signal processing. This
was mainly due to the previous observations of communication processes. For
example, onoff keying was very popular
in optical communication, which had little
place in wireless communication. The disappearance of the coherent receivers from
the optical communication in the 1990s
also proved it for a decade.
In wireless communication, the
usable spectrum is always scarce. Thus,
wireless spectral efficiency is welcome
forever, which was not the common
case in optical communication until the
last decade. However, these odds are
changing very quickly. Optical communication is readily following the trends
that are effective in wireless communication. For instance, the popularity of
the OFDM and MIMO are tested for
recent uses in the optical domain.
OFDM and orthogonal frequency division multiple access are quite effective
in the local area optical networks such
as FTTH and PON. OFDM is considered
a main tool for elastic optical networks.
Many of these wireless technologies
also reduce the consumption of energy
in the optical domain. Even cognitive
optical networking is being studied for
probable uses in the future. The results
obtained from research are also impressive, and more emulation will follow
soon. Recently, FSO technologies are
being tried in short-range and indoor
communications, though they are not
very new (and were experimented by
Graham Bell a hundred years ago).

Motivation
OFDM is used in wireless communication to mitigate the multipath fading
effects from terrestrial communications
such as mobile and digital audio broadcasting. It also facilitates high-data-rate
communication through the large constellations of quadrature amplitude modulation. In optical communication, it can
mitigate all types of dispersion effects,
which are very similar to the multipath
fading of wireless channels. In addition, it
also provides the platform for high data
rate and high spectral efficiency. EONs
can be implemented effectively using
OFDM. There is no effective alternative to

With the changes in the

demand and availability of
the new technologies, new
frontiers are being added
to the main fiber-optic
technologies.

OFDM in the realization of transparency

and elasticity in optical networks.
Similarly, MIMO-enabled optical systems
can provide a lot of advantages such as
the mitigation of dispersion and nonlinearity related impairments.
However, the biggest motivation for
following the wireless trends is the cost
savings. These technologies can save a
significant amount of money. The selforganizing and other smart approaches
of the wireless networks are also
demanded in optical networks. Despite
fundamental differences in the operations, both are growing very fast.

Enabling technologies
The main enabling technologies for
these developments are the availability
of the components and advanced signal
processing. Optical OFDM systems are
expensive and complex. However, now
integrated chips overcome these obstacles. Similarly, the implementation has
become quite easy through digital signal
processing techniques.

Conclusions
The recent trends in optical communications are changing very quickly. It is
quite amusing to see that the core of
every large communication network carries huge traffic every now and then,
which was very much unrealistic 20 years
ago. This would not have been possible
without optical fibers. With the changes
in the demand and availability of the new
technologies, new frontiers are being
added to the main fiber-optic technologies. Now, there are so many emerging
technologies in this list, such as the visible-light communication, wireless-optical
communications,all-opticalcomputing,
intelligentandautomated-opticalnetworking,andsoftware-definedoptical
networking. Furthermore, there are several new initiatives in the optical field outside of telecommunication. In the future,
it will be more advanced and diversified
with new applications and trends. One

day, it may be possible that the whole

static communication network will be
purely optical.

Read more about it

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About the author

Sudhir K. Routray (s.routray@ua.pt) is
a Graduate Student Member of the IEEE
PortugalSection.Hehasabachelors
degreeinelectricalengineeringfrom
UtkalUniversity,India,andmasters
degreeincommunicationengineering
fromSheffieldUniversity,United
Kingdom. He is currently a Ph.D. student
i nopt i c a l c ommuni c a t i onatth e
University of Aveiro, Portugal.

January/February 201433