9 February 2012

NeoPhotonics completes Phase I production expansion for narrow-linewidth tunable lasers

NeoPhotonics Corp of San Jose, CA - a vertically integrated designer and manufacturer of photonic integrated circuit (PIC)-based modules and subsystems for bandwidth-intensive, high-speed communications networks - has completed the first phase in its plan to significantly increase production capacity of narrow linewidth tunable lasers (NLW-TL) in support of rapidly growing demand. NLW-TL output has doubled since initiating the production plan in fourth-quarter 2011. The firm says that demand for the products has outstripped industry capacity due to the rapid uptake of coherent optical technology coupled with industry supply constraints attributable to the flooding in Thailand last October.

“With the flooding in Thailand, the supply of narrow-linewidth tunable lasers has become a limiting factor in the shipment of 40 and 100Gbps coherent optical transport systems,” says chairman & CEO Tim Jenks. “Accordingly, we have stepped up our production to help satisfy this critical need. Since we first announced our expansion plans, we have added seven additional customers and are engaged with several more,” he adds.

“Our first-phase capacity expansion is now full and we are again expanding to help meet industry requirements,” Jenks continues. “We expect the growth in demand for NLW-TLs to continue for the next several years in concert with the rapid adoption of coherent transport technology.”

NeoPhotonics’ NLW-TLs are compact, widely tunable and narrow-linewidth assemblies with launch power up to 35mW in the C band and 20mW in the L band. Narrow linewidths are designed to facilitate digital signal processing, which is used in coherent optical transmission to analyze the incoming signal when it is mixed with a local oscillator laser in a coherent receiver. Coherent transmission is capable of increasing the bandwidth of an optical channel from 10Gbps to 100Gbps, and is designed to enable carriers to add ‘backbone’ network capacity economically and accommodate the surge of wireline and wireless broadband services hitting the network.

NeoPhotonics says that the narrow linewidth and frequency stability of its NLW-TL are enabled by a phase-shifted DFB (distributed feedback) laser chip and proprietary packaging technology, and the laser assembly includes an integrated wavelength locker as well as electrical and firmware interfaces.

See related items:

NeoPhotonics doubles capacity of narrow-linewidth tunable lasers for coherent DWDM systems

Tags: NeoPhotonics Narrow-linewidth tunable lasers

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