The Air Force has an emerging need for a data bus/network topology which prevents communication protocol conflicts between legacy equipment and new (commercially developed) equipment on a variety of platforms. Continually upgrading legacy equipment to meet every shift in protocols is not cost effective, but the new protocols are necessary (in both network and bus topologies) if the Air Force is to leverage new technology being developed by the telcos. Tetra Tech Data Systems has developed a bi-directional, redundant UDWDM bus/network which supports multiple protocols, topologies and security levels by providing each protocol, topology, etc., with its own dedicated optical channel which provides a large electrical bandwidth that is free of constraints imposed by other topologies/protocols. To provide a larger number of channels, Tetra Tech successfully demonstrated in Phase I a novel, low cost, low insertion loss narrowband (1 GHz) fiberoptic filter utilizing fiber Bragg gratings. This filter will be utilized in Phase II to mux/demux UDWDM channels at a channel density 10 times greater than current WDM technology. To implement networks on the same fiber, but independently of the UDWDM bus, a low cost all-fiber circulator is being developed. Optionally, we will evaluate wide dynamic range analog signals on this bus.
Keywords: NARROWBAND OPTICAL FILTER WAVELENGTH DIVISION MULTIPLEXING (WDM) DENSE WDM (DWDM) FIBER BRAGG GRATI
