Mar 19 2010
Aegis Lightwave, a leader in tunable optical filter technology, announced today that a wavelength-tunable receiver for wavelength-agile passive optical networks (PON) will be demonstrated at OFC/NFOEC 2010 in Booth #419.
Results of a laboratory trial demonstrating coexistence of wavelength-agile PON with existing Gigabit PON (GPON) will also be presented.
A wavelength-agile PON system has four times the downstream bandwidth compared to currently deployed GPON or GEPON systems, which operate at a downstream bit rate of 2.5 Gb/s. The tunable receiver technology will relieve the downstream bandwidth bottlenecks created by growing consumer demand for video services on home entertainment systems and mobile devices. Wavelength-agile ONT systems deployed in subscribers’ homes or at wireless cell sites will eliminate latencies at the edges of the communications network and significantly improve user experience on the internet.
Wavelength-tunable receivers developed by Aegis will enable wavelength-agile ONT systems to receive four different laser wavelengths, each transmitting to the GPON standard. Service providers can add these laser wavelengths incrementally, thus lowering their initial capital expenditures. Service providers can also dedicate wavelengths to high bandwidth subscribers. Each wavelength operates over the existing PON infrastructure at a bit rate of 2.5 Gb/s for a total aggregate downstream bandwidth of 10 Gb/s.
“Optical re-configurability and dense wavelength division multiplexing are ubiquitous features of today’s core optical networks,” said Jeffrey Farmer, President and CEO, Aegis Lightwave. “Our tunable filters extend such wavelength-selective applications to the edge of the passive optical network to allow service providers to multiply their downstream bandwidth at a very low incremental cost.”
Wavelength-tunable filters are manufactured by Aegis Lightwave using mature semiconductor processes. A proven and reliable technology, Aegis tunable filters are extensively deployed in fiber-optic communication networks for optical channel monitoring applications throughout the world.