The authors discuss several important circuits for fiber-optic transmission, implemented in an advanced silicon bipolar integrated circuit technology. Specifically, the authors discuss the design considerations and measured performance of a 2:1 multiplexer, front end receiver, limiting amplifier, and decision circuit IC. Also discussed are three hybrid circuit modules: a 2:1 multiplexer, 1:2 demultiplexer, and parallel processing decision circuit. These ICs and hybrid circuit modules operate at multi-Gb/s data rates. The performance of these ICs indicates that advanced silicon bipolar integrated circuits with their high speed, functionality and low cost potential could play an important role in alleviating the electronic bottleneck in future multigigabit optical communication systems.>

A summary is presented of research conducted over the last few years concerning the LAMBDANET multiwavelength optical network. Descriptions are given of some variations, including several applications based on these architectures. Experimental results demonstrate the technological feasibility of this approach. The LAMBDANET design incorporates three basic ingredients: (1) it associates a unique optical wavelength with each transmitting node in a cluster of nodes; (2) the physical topology is that of a broadcast star; and (3) each receiving node identifies transmitting nodes based on the transmission wavelength through wavelength demultiplexing. This network design features full connectivity among the nodes, large nonblocking throughput, data format transparency, and flexible control. The LAMBDANET network is used for both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint applications.>