Optical networks continue to play an essential role in scaling network capacity at a dramatically reduced unit bandwidth cost, and the next generation of technology will continue this trend. Automation of optical networks has reduced operations costs and enabled customer control of high-bandwidth services. We anticipate application-driven control of optical networks to appear in the near future. This paper looks to emerging technologies, both at the physical layer and network control layer, with a goal of assessing their impact on next-generation optical network architectures. We look forward to orders of magnitude improvement both to the capacity and complexity of intelligent optical networks.

The functions necessary in broadband communications systems at speeds above 50 Mb/s are discussed. The types of components and functionality that are needed for access to networks and for the transmission and routing of traffic within networks are identified. Integrated circuit components used for customer-network access, network multiplexing, and switching are reviewed. It is shown that currently available digital VLSI technology is capable of achieving both the speeds and the levels of integration necessary to allow broadband network access even to residential subscribers.>