High-Capacity Lightwave Local Area Networks

The explosive advance of lightwave technology over the past decade has revolutionized long-distance communication; it is still unclear, however, what role photonic technology will play in short-hop applications such as Local Area Networks (LANs) and subscriber loop. 

In these applications the primary attraction of fibers extremely low propagation loss -- is not of central importance, and other fiber characteristics, such as broad bandwidth and small size, may prove to be more significant. Success in fully utilizing the capabilities of optical fibers for LANs requires innovation both in optoelectronic device technology and in network architecture.