News: Optoelectronics
2 March 2023
Casela launches 1310nm CW-DFB lasers for silicon photonics-based transceivers
Casela Technologies of Palo Alto, CA, USA — a vertically integrated semiconductor laser company delivering high-performance laser technology, products and platforms for datacoms infrastructure worldwide — has launched its 1310nm-band high-power, continuous-wave (CW) distributed feedback (DFB) lasers, which have what are claimed to be record high-power conversion efficiency and optical powers for silicon photonics-based transceivers.
Digital transformation, 5G, passive optical network (PON) and cable fiber initiatives continue to drive bandwidth growth for optical communications. East–west traffic inside data centers continues to increase bandwidth demand year-over-year at 40–50%. 400G is the current state of the art, but there is already a roadmap for 800G and then 1.6T. Silicon photonic-based transceivers are the leading solution for transceivers used inside data centers and for client optics in service provider networks, says Casela. These optical transceivers and new co-packaged systems-on-chip (SoC) architectures require very efficient, high-power, low-noise lasers at various wavelengths. With increased baud rate and lane count (4x or 8x) and bandwidth growth from 400G to 1.6T, optical power requirements have increased.
Casela’s new 1mm- and 2mm-long DFB lasers achieve 125mW to 200mW optical power when uncooled and 300mW to 400mW when cooled, respectively, enabling the use of a single laser for DR4 and DR8 transceivers. High optical powers are achieved at what are claimed to be industry-leading power conversion efficiencies of 30% when cooled and 20% when uncooled, operating at the maximum rated power. Key features include large modes with near-circular profiles that improve coupling efficiency to fibers or silicon-based waveguides and reliable operation proven during accelerated life testing. The same high-efficiency, high-power laser design is also available at other WDM, LAN-WDM and CWDM4 wavelengths.
At OFC on 6 March (4:30-4:45pm PST, Session M4C.1, Room 3), the technical details of the lasers are being presented by co-founder & chief technology officer Milind Gokhale, Casela in ‘Record high-efficiency high-power uncooled 1.31μm CW-DFB lasers’.
The new laser, along with Casela’s other products, is on display in booth #1929 at the Optical Fiber Communication Conference (OFC 2023) in San Diego, CA, USA (5–9 March).
“Casela was founded by industry veterans to focus on an innovative path to higher laser powers and efficiency demanded by new requirements in data centers and system-on-chip (SOC) applications,” says CEO Dr Bo Lu. “With the demonstration and publication of our industry-leading laser results at OFC 2023, we are announcing our new laser platform and products for transceiver and co-packaged optics applications,” he adds. “Casela’s high-output laser performance has been validated by multiple customers and will be available in high-volume production in second-half 2023.”
