LYT-GUEST EDIT-Theodoras
7/21/09
12:43 PM
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SERIES EDITORIAL
Hideo Kuwahara
Jim Theodoras
OPTICAL COMMUNICATION AS A SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE OF “CHANGE”
D
espite the severe economic downturn and recent lazy hot summer days, the broadband environment is aggressively spreading throughout the world, and our lifestyle is rapidly being altered by this high-capacity networking. Shopping on Websites is already common, and is changing our daily routine. Remote lecturing or e-education is changing schools and universities. Remote medical care is also starting to change the way hospitals do business. Teleconferencing is penetrating many companies. An important point to consider is that all these changes contribute to reduced CO2 emission. In our information and communication technology (ICT) community, the change is more direct and drastic. On laptops, Web browsing is also changing from conventional characterbased still images to moving images as on YouTube. Internet service providers, telecom carriers, and cable multiple system operators (MSOs) are also changing. They are all aiming to realize so-called triple play, or even quadruple play including mobility, and their original territories are now becoming more obscure and merging. These players are also changing from previously competing or hostile relations to recently rather collaborative relations to establish end-to-end video content delivery business. Actually, the merging of broadcast and telecommunications is slowly becoming a reality, although its business model is still struggling to be profitable. Billing is also changing from former flat rate pricing to newly proposed traffic-dependent schemes. Customer care and support service for home networking has been proposed as consumers are faced with increasingly complex connections, settings, and maintenance. We believe this broadband evolution is contributing to the improvement of social concerns such as effective production, environmental issues, our aging population, safer society, and so on. The Obama administration is stimulating U.S. economies by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009 (ARRA), which includes funds encouraging the penetration of broadband to rural areas and funds for R&D activities. The situation where Websites broadcasting the Obama inauguration ceremony experienced total meltdown due to capacity shortage will be improved. Other countries are also discussing and preparing governmental support for the enhancement of broadband penetration. But people in general seem not very conscious or aware that this broadband environment and the resulting big change in our lifestyles is actually being realized and supported by optical com-
IEEE Communications Magazine • August 2009
munications technology. Even advanced mobile technologies such as 3G, WiMAX, and future LTE are heavily dependent on optical communications technology in the backhaul of wireless base stations. Like the neuron system in the human body, the routing of information is essential for the whole system. We should not only be proud, but also louder in voicing the capability of our optical communication technologies. In this August issue, OCS features five articles. The first one describes the challenges for generalized multiprotocol label switching (GMPLS) lightpath provisioning in transparent optical networks by R. Muñoz et al., with the case for wavelength constraints in routing and signaling. It first identifies and evaluates the potential issues observed when deploying standard GMPLS, and then propose and validate new solutions. The second article is on solving the routing and wavelength assignment problem in wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) networks for future planning by T. Hindam. This article defines and analyzes the rotuing and wavelength assignment (RWA) problem by applying a virtual topology for both the optical network and the light path. The third article reports on the state and guiding principles of braodband in India and is written by A. Gumaste. This article helps us understand the landscape from the metro/access/core perspective of this country with 1.2 billion people and gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 7–9 percent. The fourth article is on next-generation passive optical networks with a performance investigation of candidate architectures, and is by J. Zhang et al. This article describes Next Generation Access 1 (NGA1) proposed by FSAN and its upgrading of the current GPON network. The fifth article is on plastic optical fiber technology for reliable home networking and is by I. Möllers. This article reviews the use of polymer optical fiber (POF) for shortreach high-capacity optical communications for residential customer premises, including the EU project POF-ALL.
BIOGRAPHIES HIDEO KUWAHARA [F] (
[email protected]) joined Fujitsu in 1974, and has been engaged for more than 30 years in R&D of optical communications technologies, including high-speed TDM systems, coherent optical transmission systems, EDFA, terrestrial and submarine WDM systems, and related optical components. His current responsibility is to lead photonics technology as a Fellow of Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. in Japan. He stayed in the United States from 2000 to 2003 as a senior vice president at Fujitsu Network Communications, Inc., and Fujitsu Laboratories of America, Richardson, Texas. He belongs to LEOS and ComSoc. He is a co-Editor of IEEE Communications Magazine’s Optical Communications Series. He is currently a member of the International Advisory Committee of the European Conference on Optical Communications, and chairs the Steering Committee of CLEO Pacific Rim. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communications Engineers (IEICE) of Japan. He has co-chaired several conferences, including Optoelectronics and Communications Conference (OECC) 2007. He received an Achievement Award from IEICE of Japan in 1998 for the experimental realization of optical terabit transmission. He received the Sakurai Memorial Award from the Optoelectronic Industry and Technology Development Association of Japan in 1990 for research on coherent optical communication. JIM THEODORAS (
[email protected]) is currently director of technical marketing at ADVA Optical Networking, working on Optical + Ethernet transport products. He has over 20 years of industry experience in optical communication, spanning a wide range of diverse topics. Prior to ADVA, he was a senior hardware manager and technical leader at Cisco Systems, where he managed Ethernet switch development on the Catalyst series product. At Cisco, he also worked on optical multiservice, switching, and transport products and related technologies such as MEMs, electronic compensation, forward error correction, and alternative modulation formats, and was fortunate enough to participate in the “pluggable optics” revolution. Prior to acquisition by Cisco, he worked at Monterey Networks, responsible for optics and 10G hardware development. He also worked at Alcatel Networks during the buildup to the telecom bubble on DWDM long-haul transport systems. Prior to DWDM and EDFAs, he worked at Clarostat on sensors and controls, IMRA America on a wide range of research topics from automotive LIDAR to femtosecond fiber lasers, and Texas Instruments on a variety of military electro-optical programs. He earned an M.S.E.E from the University of Texas at Dallas and a B.S.E.E. from the University of Dayton. He has 15 patents granted or pending.
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