By Hirokazu Yoshino, Tsutomu Asabe, Kiyoshi Kubo, Kenzo Ohno and Tashuo Fujita, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.
With the complication of the society and economy and with the higher standard of civilization, it is expected that necessary information should be provided to meet various requirements in many fields of individual life. It is desirable to develop new information systems such as two-way communication CATV system in order to meet such requirements. Several experimental two-way CATV systems are now developed in many countries.
Progress in the field of optical fiber transmission has been accelerated since a low-loss fiber of 20 dB/Km was achieved in 1970. l Because of the notable advantages such as long distance transmission capability, enlargement of capacity, and construction flexibility etc., optical fiber transmission systems are expected to be applied in many fields. For a two-way CATV system application, the HI-OVIS system has been developed and experimented in Japan.
The technology of two-way CATV system is classified into three major categories: various kinds of information filing, transmission of audio video, facsimile and data signals and information processing and control. For an optical transmission system, we have been developed optical transmitter, receiver and connector. Utilizing a new type of low reflection directional coupler, bidirectional video transmission through a single optical fiber has been experimented using same wavelength light sources at each end. A still picture storage to use interactive information retrieval is one of fundamental file of system. For this purpose, a new optical video disk which is capable of instantaneous add-on recording and playback has been developed. Utilizing these newly-developed technologies, a new interactive information system using optical fiber has been experimented. This system is able to supply more advanced services, and has a more performance characteristics. In this paper, the configuration of the system is presented.