UC San Diego

The thesis presents methods to enable commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) datacom transceivers for use in optical circuit-switching applications. These applications require fast or (burst-mode) locking characteristics. This goal requires research in two areas. First, the burst-mode characteristics of (COTS) datacom transceivers were characterized as a function of the mean received power, the power offset between the channels being switched, and the transition time of the optical switch. Second, a high-speed board that can be used for variable optical attenuation was developed and tested to mitigate the power offset. This substantially improves the burst-mode lock times. The culmination of this work is a calibration procedure that can improve the locking characteristics of COTS transceivers used in a circuit-switched optical network.