Oclaro shows high-temperature operation of 10G tunable SFP+ module

March 6, 2014
Oclaro, Inc. (NASDAQ: OCLR) says it will demonstrate a tunable SFP+ optical module based on a new indium phosphide (InP) tunable laser platform at next week’s OFC conference.

Oclaro, Inc. (NASDAQ: OCLR) says it will demonstrate a tunable SFP+ optical module based on a new indium phosphide (InP) tunable laser platform at next week’s OFC conference.

This next-generation laser technology enables high-temperature operation with less than 1.5 W power consumption, the company asserts. This will enable Oclaro customers to develop higher-density line cards in the future when cooling capacity is expected to be even more challenging. The company first began discussing its SFP+ sampling plans last fall at ECOC (see "Oclaro unveils tunable SFP+ optical transceiver").

The tunable SFP+ module is an important building block for next-generation data center, metro, and regional optical network equipment because it can reduce the size and power consumption of 10G connections. First-generation tunable SFP+ optical transceivers were not widely adopted, according to Oclaro, because they did not meet the critical requirement of less than 1.5 W of power consumption at high operating temperatures without compromising performance, especially when stacking multiple transceivers on high-density line cards. In addition, some of these first generation products were designed with a non-standard mechanical footprint that enabled heat dissipation, but did not enable customers to re-use existing reference board designs.

With its new tunable SFP+ laser design, Oclaro asserts it has now solved these problems. The company says that its chip design and materials enable the module to be fully compliant to the SFP form factor and operate at 1.5 W at 70°C with excellent OSNR tolerance.

“Oclaro has been at the forefront of tunable laser technology advancements with its leading portfolio of iTLAs, 300-pin MSA transponders, and pluggable T-XFP transceivers,” said Yves LeMaitre, president of optical connectivity business at Oclaro. “With our new tunable SFP+ module, we’ve leveraged this expertise to solve the challenges our customers face when they need high-density cards operating at high temperatures while remaining within the power budget and offering the same level of performance and reliability as previous tunable offerings.”

The new tunable SFP+ module is based on the latest version of a compact monolithically integrated laser Mach-Zehnder (ILMZ) chip, enabling the module to achieve what Oclaro describes as “leading-edge” OSNR performance while providing approximately 60% reduced power consumption and 50% smaller form factor than current tunable XFP offerings.

Featuring proprietary laser and modulator control algorithms integrated in the product firmware, the new Oclaro tunable SFP+ module takes advantage of new materials to improve the performance of digital-supermode distributed Bragg Reflector (DS-DBR) tunable lasers designed on an InP photonic integration platform. This includes the use of aluminum quaternary active layers embedded into the device structure to significantly reduce power consumption and shrink the size of the laser and modulator chip.

The laser supports multi-rate operation from 9.95 Gbps to 11.3 Gbps and is tunable across the full C-band with 96 channels on the ITU-T 50GHz grid.

The new SFP+ module is sampling now with volume production ready in Q3 2014. Oclaro will demonstrate the SFP+ module operating up to 85°C in Booth #3145 during next week’s OFC conference.

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