News: Optoelectronics
6 March 2023
Lumentum introducing latest solutions and showcasing technology and partner demos at OFC
In booth #3415 at the Optical Fiber Communication Conference (OFC 2023) in San Diego (5–9 March), Lumentum Holdings Inc of San Jose, CA, USA is featuring its portfolio of optical communications products for terrestrial and undersea networks and cloud data centers, underscoring its capabilities in vertical and functional integration.
At the exhibition, Lumentum is being recognized by 2023 Lightwave Innovation Reviews with the Lightwave Award for the first-to-market laser transmitters for next-generation data-center applications using 200G PAM4 externally modulated lasers (EMLs).
As part of Lumentum's innovation roadmap, the firm is also highlighting its vision around the next era of fiber-optic communications, which it has termed ‘Carrier and Spatial Division Multiplexing’ (CSDM). The CSDM era will be enabled by innovation at the photonic, optical device, and system levels, says the firm.
Next-generation and new products introduction
Lumentum enables customers to continue to scale network data capacity with its portfolio of photonic products and emerging technologies. A few of the products being announced include:
- TrueFlex Micro Twin 2x34 iCL (integrated C and L) wavelength-selective switch (WSS)
The Lumentum iCL WSS enables provisioning of the C- and L-band spectrums of the optical fiber for a lower cost per THz bandwidth, combining what used to require two WSS devices into a single unit at a reduced cost. It enables easy integration, as the WSS has the same form factor and uses the standard software interface as the existing TrueFlex Micro Twin WSSs. The integrated device also enables space and power savings to support C- and L-band spectrum simultaneously.
Lumentum iCL WSS samples are shipping to lead customers and aligned with production timelines based on customer requests. - TrueFlex Contentionless 16x26 WSS
Lumentum's latest 16x26 Contentionless WSS for add/drop applications, complementing the existing 8x26, supports scalable CDC network nodes with up to 16 degrees, enabling multiple fiber pairs per route and increasing the amplified bandwidth between network nodes. Lumentum’s MxN WSS portfolio also supports high add/drop capacity and features low insertion loss and inherent channel filtering, enabling the highest performance in backbone ROADM applications.
Beta-grade samples are shipping to lead customers. Reliability qualification is underway, and the product’s C-band and L-band variants are expected to be concurrently released to mass production in May. - ROADM Node-on-a-Blade
Lumentum has developed an innovative ROADM (reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer) Node-on-a-Blade by integrating optical switching, amplification and monitoring functionality from multiple degrees onto a single line-card. This functional integration incorporates TrueFlex WSS, an optical channel monitor, and compact dual-emitter pump lasers. By leveraging components with best-in-class reliability, this approach reduces the size, power and cost of a multi-degree ROADM node while maintaining robust product reliability.
Lumentum customizes ROADM Node-on-a-Blade designs for network equipment manufacturers and ensures seamless integration into their systems. Several custom designs are now in production. - 5300 Series Pump Laser
The 5300 Series Pump Laser is a small form factor, high-reliability 980nm pump laser for undersea submarine repeater and branching unit applications, which offers significant space savings compared with conventional butterfly packages. Offered in two power levels (5300 HP with up to 800mW available and 5300 LP with up to 450mW available), the product is currently beta sampling, with release to production expected in August. - H10 Series Pump Laser
The H10 Series Pump Laser is a low-profile, 3-pin 980nm pump laser for transceiver amplification, offering one of the smallest form factors in the industry to fit into coherent pluggable modules such as QSFP-DD and CFP2/4. It provides a noise-free, narrow-band spectrum at elevated operating temperatures up to 80°C and employs Lumentum’s DFB chip technology, which enables 250mw uncooled output power without needing an external grating. The product is currently beta sampling, with release to production expected in May. - S37 Series Pump Laser
The S37 Series Pump Laser is a low-power-consumption 14xx nm pump laser with high thermal efficiency to improve overall power consumption in Raman amplifiers. It offers up to 550mW in the 1420–1470nm wavelength band, up to 500mW at 1471–1495nm, and up to 450mW at 1496–1510nm. The product is currently beta sampling, with release to production expected in June.
Technology and product demonstrations
Live demonstrations of Lumentum's high-speed coherent transmission capabilities are being showcased at the booths of partners Nubis (#6410), Open ROADM (#6341 and #6440) and OIF (#5101):
- CPO/ELS Technology Demo: Lumentum’s ultra-high-power 1310nm distributed feedback laser (DFB) will operate in O-Net’s active external laser small-form-factor pluggable (ELSFP) modules. Lumentum is showcasing ELS (external laser source) solutions that address high-bandwidth artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) applications for the next generation of data centers.
- Reliable Open ROADM transport network demo: Open ROADM Multi-Source Agreement (MSA) has been defining interoperability specifications for disaggregated optical transport networks. At OFC, a group of Open ROADM MSA members, including Lumentum, is demonstrating optical network equipment elements that seamlessly interoperate at data rates up to 400G at the OFCnet booth #6341 and IOWN at booth #6440.
- OIF multi-vendor interoperability demo: Lumentum is participating in live and static interoperable optical networking solutions demonstrations at OIF's booth #5101, for 400ZR optics, co-packaging architectures, and Common Management Interface Specification (CMIS) implementations. Lumentum's QSFPDD 400G ZR coherent module and QSFPDD 400G multi-rate OpenZR+ coherent module are part of the OIF 400G ZR and CMIS demonstrations.
