17 September 2002 -- Bookham Technology, Oxford, UK, and Cierra Photonics have formed a two-part technology and commercial association to bring the benefits of high integration-based functionality to WDM products, such as optical add/drop multiplexers (OADMs).
Bookham Technology is contributing its ASOC design and manufacturing technology for fabricating integrated optical circuits on a silicon substrate, together with its leading range of integrated GaAs and InP tunable lasers and modulators. Cierra Photonics brings to the association its range of thin-film filters, based on the company's Advanced Energetic Deposition (AED) technology, a process for wafer-scale integration that results in lower costs, high yields and industry-leading optical performance.
In the second part of the association, Bookham Technology will exclusively distribute Cierra Photonics' complete range of optical channel filters in Europe, including the high-performance terra-Q and solla-Q families.
Cierra's terra-Q family supports narrow-band channel spacings at 100GHz, 50GHz and 25GHz, with broad and flat passbands. It also has a low temperature coefficient in its transmission mode, making the devices relatively insensitive to changes in the laser spectrum or to the system's temperature.
The solla-Q family comprises a variety of broad-passband filters that pass groups of multiple adjacent channels through the filter. These three-port devices form the basic building blocks for DWDM optical systems designed with a banded architecture. Key features include steep rejection skirts to minimise the number of skipped channels, low Insertion loss, and flat passband.
These products will complement Bookham's established product lines based on the ASOC technology. ASOC is the premier platform for the integration of complex optical functions onto a single, compact optical chip. Bookham has developed and manufactured products with multiple optical functions on a chip such as Bookham's established integrated multiplexer and variable optical attenuator (Mux-VOA) modules, and three-function monolithic optical channel monitor with switched input.
Steve Turley, Bookham's Chief Commercial Officer, said, "The WDM market has evolved and is moving towards a smaller number of suppliers who can offer a wider range of products and product capabilities to systems vendors. Combining the strengths of Bookham's and Cierra's integrated technologies will enable us to address more effectively the growing opportunity for OADM applications in the metro and access markets."
"The Bookham marketing association is an important milestone in Cierra's history", said Glenn Yamamoto; Cierra Photonics' CEO. "Not only can we more effectively serve our European customers with TFF based components, but customers will benefit from having access to a broad set of world class active & passive network component solutions delivered by Bookham."