December 15, 2004 Quebec City, Canada -- EXFO Electro-Optical Engineering Inc. announced today a significant expansion of its line of handheld test instruments designed for installation and maintenance applications in optical networks.
According to company representatives, the 600 handheld series, which consists of the FOT-600 Optical Loss Test Set (OLTS), FPM-600 Power Meter, and FLS-600 Light Source, is an excellent compromise between EXFO's entry-level 300 handheld series and its flagship and patented FOT-930 series. The versatile 600 series can be used for a number of tasks, including fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) deployments, CWDM and DWDM applications.
The FOT-600 Optical Loss Test Set features Pass-Fail indicators, providing on-site analysis to speed up and simplify testing. With extensive memory capacity and a software converter, the FOT-600 OLTS facilitates data management and enables data transfer to a personal computer via a universal serial bus (USB) connection. Variable user configurations are available, including three singlemode wavelengths (1310 nm, 1550 nm, and 1490 nm or 1625 nm) or two multimode wavelengths (850 nm and 1300 nm).
The FPM-600 Power Meter delivers a wide dynamic range, high-power measurement, and a Min./Max. power function, allowing measurements of rapid system-power fluctuations. According to EXFO, these features render the FPM-600 a very powerful tool for the most demanding applications, including high-speed DWDM or CWDM network qualification.
The FLS-600 Light Source is available in laser, LED, and vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) models with several wavelength options.
EXFO's 600 handheld series is ideally suited for FTTP applications. It can test passive optical networks (PONs) at 1310 nm, 1490 nm, and 1550 nm, the three wavelengths recommended by leading standards bodies for FTTP testing.
"EXFO is committed to expanding its technology and market leadership in optical testing for network service providers (NSPs), especially with burgeoning fiber deployments in the access network," contends �tienne Gagnon, EXFO's vice president of optical layer product management. "Our R&D and marketing staff is constantly fine-tuning our product designs to enhance ease of use and productivity, while lowering cost of ownership for our customers. Following this latest product-line expansion, we have rendered the task of gathering and managing test data far easier for field technicians to ease network maintenance, upgrades, and deployment of new services," he adds.