Products, Tech Debut at OFC

A number of new optical communication technologies and capabilities, particularly those for 40 Gb/s and 100 Gb/s optical links, were unveiled by companies such as Finisar, JDSU, NeoPhotonics, Bookham and Agilent Technologies this week during the 2009 Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition and the National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference (OFC/NFOEC).

Finisar Corp. of Sunnyvale, Calif., demonstrated its new 120 Gb/s parallel link, one of several new form factors it has that are capable of supporting 40 Gb/s and 100 Gb/s optical links over multimode or single-mode fiber optics.

"Finisar's demonstration of a working 120Gb/s link using a 12x10Gb/s parallel active optical cable serves not only as an important proof-of-concept in enabling 100-G line rates, but also demonstrates significant progress in optics technology," said Rafik Ward, vice president of marketing at Finisar. The company is also displaying a live 16x Fibre Channel short-wave SFP+ transceiver capable of operating over 150 m of OM3 fiber, 40 Gb/s DWDM transponders using RZ-DQPSK (Dual Polarization Quatenary Phase Shift Keyed) modulation, as well as WaveShaper, what it said is the industry's first programmable optical processor line for the optical instrumentation market.

JDSU of Milpitas, Calif., announced what it said is the industry's first monolithically integrated and tunable optical transceiver. Optical transceivers act as a key interface that convert optical signals into electrical data as they exit dense wavelength division multiplexer (DWDM) networks.

The tunable XFP transceiver is 85 percent smaller than previous tunable products, reducing power dissipation by 60 percent and cutting electrical and cooling costs. It also allows network equipment manufacturers (NEMs) to pack more transceiver interfaces into a system or deploy smaller systems within a network node, which gives NEMs and service providers flexibility to add more with a "pay-as-you-grow" approach without affecting network performance. JDSU began sampling the tunable XFP transceiver with customers in 2008 and said it expects to ship the product in volume by this summer.

"The tunable transceiver market had not yet transitioned to pluggable solutions because the technology breakthroughs hadn't happened -- until now," said Alan Lowe, president of the Communications and Commercial Optical Products business segment at JDSU. "We are engaged in 12 designs with nine customers and have received very positive feedback. Many of our top customers are already designing the JDSU tunable XFP transceiver into their next-generation systems."

San Jose, Calif.-based NeoPhotonics announced two new passive photonic integrated circuit (PIC) -based products that it expects to become key enablers of the emerging "coherent" optical network transmission systems for 40 and 100 Gb/s networks. Coherent signalling technology allows first 40 Gb/s and then 100 Gb/s to be transmitted over DWDM channels currently transmitting 10 Gb/s; NeoPhotonics said tis mixer and demodulator products provide for transparent phase decoding within each of the two major branches of coherent transmission systems emerging for 40 and 100 Gb/s.

NeoPhotonics said its coherent mixer requires no power, operates across the C or L band and is based on planar integration using lower cost, high volume semiconductor production methods. Its DQPSK demodulator product consists of two delay-line interferometers, providing in-phase and quadrature analysis of the phase-encoded signal. To accommodate the unpredictable and varying nature of the received signal polarization, the demodulator was optimized to exhibit extremely low sensitivity to polarization variations, the company said.

“These demodulators are precision assemblies of passive optical components and, since they are used on each channel rather than on each fiber, will be required in fairly large volumes with tightly maintained specifications,” said Ferris Lipscomb, vice president of marketing for NeoPhotonics. “As such, they are ideal candidates for photonic integration, and especially planar waveguide integration.”

Bookham Inc. of San Jose launched a 300-pin small form factor (SFF) transponder with electronic dispersion compensation at the show, saying the product - TL9000M - will help NEMs achieve significant cost savings by making network design more flexible and simplified.

The 10 Gb/s TL9000M retains the SFF of the company's existing TL9000 but combines that transponder size with the performance benefits of MLSD-based (maximum likelihood sequence detection) EDC to provide significant tolerance to chromatic dispersion (CD), polarization mode dispersion (PMD) and nonlinearities inherent in telecom networks, Bookham said. This will enable product deployment over a greater proportion of installed fiber routes, including those that will not currently support required spans of 80 km at 10 Gb/s without equalization. The transponder will also eliminate the need for expensive precharacterizing of fiber paths for poor PMD performance.

"The inclusion of MLSD-based EDC into our small form factor transponder is a significant advancement that will allow network engineers to use this technology for all deployments," said Chris Clarke, Bookham vice president of strategy and chief engineer, Telecom Div. "Our indium phosphide building blocks within the transponder allow the real estate to incorporate electronics that give our products a significant advantage in terms of performance. Combining this with the cost, size, and unrivalled power dissipation elements, Bookham will bring this technology from a niche application to potential industrywide deployment."

New high-bandwidth 40 Gb/s and 20 Gb/s parallel optics transceivers were announced at OFC/NFOEC by Avago Technologies of San Jose. The QSFP MSA-compliant high-performance fiber optics transceivers are for short-range parallel multiline data communications and interconnect applications. Avago said its new four channel AFBR-79Q4Z and AFBR-79Q5Z transceivers operate at 10 Gb/s per channel and 5 Gb/s per channel, respectively and are designed for multimode fiber systems that operate at a nominal wavelength of 850 nm. The transceivers are available now, the company said.

Discovery Semiconductors Inc. of Ewing, N.J., demonstrated their "Kitty Hawk" 10 Gb/s coherent optical OOK system for 300-km metro systems using all-electrical dispersion compensation. The demo highlighted error-free reception of 10 Gb/s date over 300 km of standard single-mode fiber with no optical dispersion compensation whatsoever.

“Enabling network operators the flexibility to transmit 10 Gb/s traffic to distances up to 300 km without adding costly optical dispersion compensation and optical amplification, was a key motivation in our development of the Kitty Hawk coherent system,” said Jim Rue, manager of high speed products at Discovery Semiconductors. “Our ready-to-deploy coherent system combined with AMCC’s industry-leading 10-G IC technology allows for cost-effective upgrades of 2.5 Gb/s to 10 Gb/s or new 10 Gb/s installations up to 300 km.”

Agilent Technologies demonstrated what it said is the industry's first optical modulation analyzer for 400 to 100 G device test, a PXIT 10 G DCA with PON filter rates, and a unique smart post processing and photonic application suite for characterization and analysis of optical components and signals. The demonstration was designed to show how Agilent's test solutions help optical-component vendors bring products to market at the right time for high-speed links, broadband infrastructure expansion, and 40 to 100 G designs and test, the company said.

Polatis and JDSU announced that JDSU will integrate Polatis products as part of its portfolio of test instruments for the lab and production markets. The agreement expands a distributorship that was originally entered into in 2005 when the companies first began offering the Series 1000 all-optical solutions for automating test and measurement processes.

For more information, visit: www.ofcnfoec.org