K2 Optronics Inc.
K2 Optronics is positioning itself to play a key role in the telecommunications industry, which by definition today encompasses voice, data, and video transmission technologies. Everyone is aware of the forecasted growth rates and demand projections associated with the Internet, which is being driven to a large degree by the eCommerce revolution. Indeed many companies today are being set up to trade solely using the Internet. Late in 1999, for the first time, Internet traffic on the world's telecommunication networks actually overtook voice traffic levels, an event which was unthinkable 10 years ago.
To counter this exponential growth in bandwidth, telecommunications companies world-wide are deploying new techniques to increase bandwidth capacity. Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) is one such technology, which has emerged as the leading economical technology of choice for increasing capacity. DWDM enables many light signals to co-exist on the same fiber-simultaneously carrying many discreet signals or data/voice channels. This enables potentially a 100+ fold increase in the data carrying capacity of a single fiber link.
The next hurdle is to wavelength convert, switch or route these individual signals from one fiber to another-that is cost-effectively managing thousands of wavelengths as more DWDM systems are deployed. For example, passively routing a signal (wavelength) from one metro network to another; or switching intersecting fiber trunks or wavelengths at a central office; or dynamically generating many different wavelengths from a single source to move data between different destinations. It is this matrix switching and wavelength tuning element that still remains unsolved in optical networks-and it is this area that K2 Optronics is addressing.