News Release ______
OFS AND FURUKAWA LAUNCH HIGH-OUTPUT NARROW-LINEWIDTH TUNABLE
LASER FOR ULTRA-HIGH BIT RATE 100 Gbps TRANSMISSION
OFC/ NFOEC 2011, Booth 2019, Los Angeles, California, March 8, 2011 -
Furukawa Electric Co., Ltd., and the U.S. based OFS, Specialty Photonics
Division today announced a high-output narrow-linewidth full-band tunable
laser for ultra-high bit rate 100-Gbps digital coherent transmission. The full-
band tunable laser provides superior performance as a signal light source
and/or a local light source for digital coherent communication systems.
Furukawa Electric has begun shipping commercial samples. The product will
be exhibited at OFC/NFOEC 2011, the world's largest international conference/exhibition on telecommunications.
Background
In recent years, there has been an exponential increase in the volume network infrastructure traffic, due to several
enterprise and consumer market trends including cloud computing, data centers, video on demand (VoD), voice over
IP (VoIP), video distribution, ubiquity of smartphones, popularity of social networks and peer to peer applications.
As a result, the access, metro and long-haul network infrastructure will be required to plan and expand for ever
increasing network capacity demand, eventually increasing the use for tunability in various systems and networks
containing add/drop points.
Signal multiplexing techniques such as wavelength multiplexing help deal with the technological complexities of
expanding transmission capacity in the core network infrastructure. However, even this technique is quickly
approaching technological limitations with the current number of multiplexed wavelengths of 88. Therefore, it is
becoming a requirement to raise the transmission speed per wavelength from 40 Gbps to 100 Gbps.
If the ultra-high bit rate optical transmission of 100 Gbps is implemented based on the conventional scheme of
binary intensity modulation where optical intensity is ON/OFF keyed, it is impossible to transmit optical signals
reliably because the signals are heavily impacted by degradation and noise over the transmission line. In May 2010,
the Optical Interconnecting Forum adopted the digital coherent scheme, which uses light phase or state of the
lightwave in place of light intensity or ON/OFF keying. This makes transmission much more robust against signal
degradation and unaffected by noise, along with the multilevel modulation scheme which enables suppression of net
transmission speed.
This scheme has already been employed in parts of Europe and is expected to be deployed full-scale in North
America in 2012. In the digital coherent scheme, interference between phase-modulated signal light and local light is
utilized for demodulation at the receiving side to obtain intensity-modulated signal light. Since high coherency is
required to suppress errors at the time of signal demodulation, both the signal light and local light are required to be
low in oscillation spectrum width or narrow in linewidth.
With its proven track record in signal light source for optical network systems, Furukawa developed a full-band
tunable laser, utilizing its developed technology for full-band tunable lasers of distributed feedback (DFB) laser array
type. The tunable laser has an output of higher than 40 mW with a linewidth of lower than 500 kHz. These
specifications are expected to deliver superior performance as a signal light source and/or a local light source for
digital coherent communication systems.
Product Specifications
Item Specification
Tunable wavelength range 1528 ~ 1564 nm (C band)
Optical output 40 mW (at C band)
Linewidth < 500 kHz
Side-mode suppression ratio > 40 dB
Average relative intensity noise < -145 dB/Hz
Wavelength stability < ±2.5 GHz
About Furukawa Electric Company, Ltd.
Furukawa Electric Co. Ltd. (www.furukawa.co.jp/english) is an $11 billion global leader in the design, manufacture
and supply of fiber optic products, network products, electronics components, power cables, nonferrous metals, and
other advanced technology products. Headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, Furukawa operates production facilities on five
continents around the globe, including OFS and the OFS, Specialty Photonics Division, in the USA.