Acousto-electro-optic demultiplexers in high data-rate optical communication systems

Acousto-electro-optic scanners are introduced as time-division demultiplexing devices in optical fibre communication systems. These devices can time-demultiplex digital signals with multiple Gb s ^-1 data rates into a large number of channels. Acousto-electro-optic scanners combine the advantages of the large throughputs of acousto-optic scanners and the wide bandwidth of electro-optic scanners. Two-cell scanners are also introduced as a mean of increasing the time resolution by a factor of two compared with one-cell scanners.