Abstract

While optical networking R&D has focused on pushing electronics out of optical networks, the real world has shown that optical networks must function as part of a complex Internet with electronic interfaces and communication links that use fiber optics, free-space optical, radio frequencies, and microwave frequencies. This tutorial will focus on how optical networks can be adapted to fit into this architecture and applied to military applications.

For military applications in theater, the importance of light weight, small size, and low power cannot be overestimated. This tutorial will therefore discuss how optical networks can be made light and small with low power consumption. The approach is to start with chip-scale DWDM photonics and integrate electronics so as to form a flexible and redundant network for military mobile platforms. The choices for routing will be discussed including techniques as unconventional as optical CDMA. This tutorial will concentrate on challenges of networking at the physical and data link control layers. The use of an optical network for analog communications will also be included.

Biography 

Peter A. Schulz is a staff member in the Optical Communications Technology Group at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. He received an S.B. degree from MIT and a Ph.D. degree from the University of California at Berkeley, both in physics. Peter went on to study photodetachment spectroscopy at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Peter was an assistant professor at Georgia Tech and a Research Fellow at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Peter has been at Lincoln Laboratory since 1986 where he has invented new solid-state lasers, developed new broadband microwave signal processing techniques using photonics, and used photonics in novel ways to build advanced optical networks. This last work includes experimental work on a wide-area network between Boston and Washington, DC and a reconfigurable optical network for an aircraft and theoretical work on optical CDMA networks.