MOEMS for optical communication: status of the European industrial activities and technical and economical trends for the next 3 years

摘要

The fibre-optic telecommunication market has dramatically evolved. Over the 1999-2000 period, almost $110 billion have been exchanged for companies and new technology acquisitions by large groups. This market continues to stimulate the creation of new start-ups. 2 to 5 companies are created every month in Europe in this field and the same in the USA and numerous other ones are in launching phase. Moreover, there are still high investment efforts from Venture Capitalists in this field. Today, it is obvious that fibre-optics telecom is the new "Killer Applications" that microsystems technology was looking for. As the objective is to have all-optical routing systems, the routing function could be achieved using MEMS components, which is the only technology which could cope with the realisation of large matrix size cross-connects. Moreover, as demand is not uniform in the network, there is also a growing need for reconfiguration of parts of the network (to create regions of higher capacity for example). MEMS are suitable components for reconfiguration: WDM add/drop, optical cross-connect or optical switches. The presentation will make the up-to-date analysis on who is doing what in this field in Europe and what are the products for which applications on MEMS for optical telecom.