We describe some of the results of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) sponsored Consortium on Wideband All-Optical Networks in developing architectures, technology components, and applications for the realization of scaleable, wideband, and transparent optical wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) networks. Our architecture addresses all-optical transport over the wide, metropolitan, and local areas. It utilizes wavelength partitioning, routing, and active multiwavelength cross-connect switches to achieve a network that is scaleable in the number of users, data rates, and geographic span. The network supports two services which can be point-to-multipoint or multipoint-to-multipoint simplex or duplex connections. The A service is a transparent physically circuit-switched service and the B-service is a scheduled time-slotted circuit which is transparent within its time slots. We have developed a 20-channel local and metropolitan area WDM testbed deployed in the Boston area, now undergoing characterization and experimental applications.

High-performance optical data networks of the future may interconnect hundreds of users at gigabit rates for a reasonable cost. A novel approach is described that utilizes a passive star coupler for distribution, a multiplicity of frequency-shift keyed (FSK) tunable lasers to provide a frequency division multiplexed (FDM) network, and a tunable optical fiber Fabry-Perot filter to select the channels and convert the FSK signal to ASK (amplitude-shift keying) for direct detection. The design of high-speed FDM-FSK direct detection networks and the performance of critical devices, such as tunable FM lasers, tunable filters, integrated star couplers, and optical amplifiers, are reviewed and discussed.>