Introduction

As our information-hungry society moves toward ubiquitous broadband services there will be the need for telecommunications switching systems able to switch and control large numbers of users sending and receiving this high-bit-rate information. Aggregate capacities of these future systems could exceed 1 Tb/s by the turn of the century. Some of the new services that will require these large capacities include the transport and switching of NTSC video, enhanced-quality television (EQTV), high-definition television (HDTV), switched video, high-data-rate file transfers and information retrieval, animated graphics, in addition to the need for an interconnect for diskless workstations and local area networks/metropolitan area networks (LAN/MAN). These new services are the future of telecommunications companies and thus the driving force to bring photonics into switching systems.