To increase the total information carrying capacity, both optical Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) technique and Electronically Time Division Multiplexed (ETDM) channels are combined together into a single strain of fiber in today's high capacity optic fiber communication links. Recent laboratory experiments have demonstrated successful transmission of terabits per second in one fiber such as sending 64 channels of data streams, each running at 42.7 Gbps, for an aggregated capacity of 2.5 Tbps over 4,000 km with a record-high capacity-distance product exceeding 10 petabit-km/s per fiber or transmitting 10.2 Tb/s (256 x 42.7 Gb/s) over a shorter distance of 300 km.

This talk will survey some basics of high capacity optic fiber transmission link and provide a general overview of the high speed devices needed to build the essential physical layer interface between the high speed TDM optical signals and the lower bit-rate tributary electrical signals. Several critical function blocks and the corresponding implementation will be reviewed for performance requirement to achieve aggregated channel data rate of 40 Gbps and beyond.