Agere Systems Announces Industry’s Most Powerful Distributed Feedback Raman Pump Lasers for 10- and 40-Gb/s Optical Networks

Agere Systems, a provider of communications semiconductors, announced the industry's most powerful 14xx nm distributed feedback (DFB) Raman pump lasers used to boost signal power in ultra-high capacity optical networking systems. These pump lasers support Raman amplification in both co-pumping (in which the pump's optical power is transmitted in the same direction as the communications signal) and counter-pumping (in which power is sent against the signal) configurations with excellent wavelength stability.

These new additions to Agere's 269-type family of 1480 and 14xx nm pump lasers offer an operating power of 280 milliwatts (mW) with drive currents comparable to high-power Fabry-Perot (FP) lasers. 14xx nm pump lasers are used for Raman amplification, which boosts a signal using the transmission fiber as the gain medium.

These new high-power DFB products represent a breakthrough in 14xx nm pump laser technology by integrating the beneficial characteristics of an external FBG laser design -- such as stimulated Brillouin scattering suppression -- with the excellent relative-intensity noise (RIN) performance of a DFB laser. The combination of both characteristics is critical to enable co-propagating Raman pumping, which distributes gain over the first few kilometers of the transmission fiber. The typical RIN value of Agere's DFB lasers is -158 dB/Hz, a major improvement over comparable external FBG-stabilized lasers with a typical RIN of -125 dB/Hz. Integrating wavelength stabilization into the chip eliminates the external FBG and thus also improves the stabilization over operating temperature.