Transmode has announced its intention to support WDM-PON via its existing WDM platforms. The new iWDM-PON architecture will be designed to support multiservice access networks via standard C-Band DWDM optics.
Transmode's iWDM-PON strategy will leverage its existing TM-Series and TG-Series Active and Passive WDM platforms, thus extending WDM metro network capabilities into FTTx applications, primarily in enterprise and backhaul scenarios to start. For example, Transmode plans to add existing active component to the passive TG-Series, as well as additional optics now in development, to create the iWDM-PON architecture.
For example, as Magnus Olson, director of hardware engineering at Transmode, described in a presentation today at the WDM-PON Forum in Orlando, Transmode plans to introduce WDM-PON friendly injection-locked self-tuning SFPs. The injection-locked technology provides the required central-office seeding light source for WDM-PON operation. The company also a low-cost fixed wavelength 1-Gbps DWDM SFP. The two new devices will significantly reduce the cost of WDM optics in access devices and simplify network deployments, Transmode asserts.
According to Olson, Transmode envisions the ability to support 40 channels via the iWDM-PON technology. Meanwhile, staying on the ITU-T grid in the C-Band promotes interworking among the access, metro, and core without the need for wavelength conversion. It also promotes the ability to extend WDM-PON reach via standard amplification and dispersion compensation technologies.
The use of WDM-PON enables service providers to increase capacity on a per-customer basis, Transmode adds.
Transmode expects customer trials of the new self-tuning iWDM-PON options to begin at the start of 2012, with network deployments planned in the middle of 2012.
For more information on FTTx/access systems and suppliers, visit the Lightwave Buyers Guide.