Coherent optical CDMA networks

Recent work in optical code-division multiple access (CDMA) is reviewed, progressing from incoherent to coherent techniques. It is shown that under appropriate conditions, coherent CDMA can in principle rival wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) in terms of aggregate network throughput. Furthermore, it is shown that at high data rates, some of the components for WDM are coherent CDMA networks are nearly identical, indicating a similarity between the two approaches. CDMA retains a coding aspect which may prove attractive in security applications