Passband flattened binary-tree structured add-drop multiplexers using sion waveguide technology

When writing this introduction I saw the following press release on the Internet: “Nielsen//Netratings reports a record half billion people worldwide now have home internet access‿. The number of home users grew worldwide with 5 % over the last quarter of 2001. The growth was nearly doubled compared to Q3 2001. The growth in Europe was 4.9%, almost equal to the world growth. One in three households in Europe/Middle East and Africa have Internet access, compared with over half in the US. The Netherlands has 52 % of the households connected to the Internet and 82 % of the computers is connected to the Internet. Another press release also fromNielsen//Netratings was titled as “Broadband Usage Outpaces Narrowband for the first time.‿ 1.19 billion of the total 2.3 billion hours was spent by broadband surfers online in January 2002 in the US. The broadband time spent in January 2002 was 64 % higher than in January 2001. Nearly 21.9 million surfers (in the US) at-home accessed the Internet via broadband connection in January 2002 compared to 13.1 million in January 2001, a boost of 67% in one year time. So there is an unstoppable march towards broadband. (See www.nielsen-netratings.com) This demand can be fulfilled with the tremendous bandwidth of the optical fiber of 30 THz (1420-1670 nm). It is not possible to directly address this complete band, since the current maximum speed of the electronics and modulators is 40-100 GHZ. Wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) is used to divide the band in multiple sub bands. The spacing between the sub band channels is defined by the ITU grid. Common spacings between channels are 12.5, 25, 50, 100 and 200 GHz. The device that combines these channels onto one fiber is called a Multiplexer (Mux) and the device that does the opposite, spatial separation of frequency channels onto different fibers, is called a demultiplexer (Demux). When Mux and Demux are combined it is possible to select only one (or more) channel to be dropped or added and leaving the remaining channels undisturbed. Such a device is called an Add-drop multiplexer(ADM). Optical transmission systems 3.28 Tbit/s over a few hundred of kilometers[Nielsen 2000] or 2 Tbit/s over almost ten thousand kilometers [Yamada 2002] have already be reported.