all optical network (AON)

An All Optical Network(AON) is an optical network without O/E converters that is based exclusively on optical components.

Such a network generally operates with wavelength division multiplexing(WDM) or dense wavelength division multiplexing ( DWDM), with optical time division multiplexers( OTDM), optical amplifiers, optical add/drop multiplexers( OADM) and optical crossconnect( OXC) for path selection and switching. An All Optical Network should operate without transponders in the core network and relocate them to nodes at the edge.

AON networks are designed for transmission rates of 100 Gbit/s and higher and can use a wrap technique in the feeder area to integrate the feeder signals into the high-bit-rate data streams of the optical core network like Gigabit Ethernet. This is referred to as digital wrapping.