Mar 22 2010
Furukawa Electric Co., Ltd., and the U.S.-based OFS, Specialty Photonics Division, are pleased to announce the availability of a Narrow Linewidth Full-Band Tunable Laser, a Coherent Mixer with Built-in Polarization Multiplexer/Demultiplexer, and a Polarization Maintaining Fiber with a new stress rod design for application in Optical Digital Coherent Transmission Systems.
The next generation of ultra-high speed optical networks is going up to and beyond 100 Gbps, and new components are necessary to support these speeds.
Narrow Linewidth Full-Band Tunable Laser: Furukawa has developed a Tunable Distributed Feedback (DFB) laser with a linewidth less than 500 KHz. This decreases the linewidth of conventional DFB technology by a factor of 3 with an output optical power of 40 mW or higher. The high wavelength stability and high reliability characteristic of conventional DFB technology are maintained even over this decreased linewidth and high output power performance level.
Coherent Mixer with Built-in Polarization Mx/DMx: In order to generate ultra-high speed transmissions in an optical digital coherent system, system designers use a combination of a polarization multiplexer/demultiplexer and an optical interference device in a Dual Polarization Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (DP-QPSK) receiver.
Furukawa's established and proven planar lightwave circuit (PLC) technology has been applied into this new Coherent Mixer now integrated with a Built-in Polarization Mx/Dmx to improve the performance of DP-QPSK transmission. Our integration of these parts on one chip results in smaller size, while still maintaining superior loss uniformity (lower than 1 dB), low skew (typically lower than 1 ps), and high polarization extinction ratio (higher than 18 dB).
Polarization Maintaining Fiber with a New Stress Rod Design: In the DP-QPSK modulation system, optical signals have to be transmitted while keeping the state of polarization. This can occur between an optical local oscillator and a coherent mixer or between a signal light source and a modulator. The new PM fiber created by Furukawa's wholly owned subsidiary, OFS, achieves a superior polarization extinction ratio and low insertion loss with a novel design to support these systems.
Furukawa and OFS will be exhibiting at OFC/NFOEC, Booth #1023 beginning March 22, 2010.