NeoPhotonics ships coherent mixers for 40/100G receivers

SEPTEMBER 18, 2009 -- NeoPhotonics is announcing next week, at ECOC 2009 in Vienna, Austria, the general availability and volume shipment of its photonic integrated circuit (PIC)-based coherent mixer for 40- and 100-Gbps optical transmission systems. Coherent mixers enable ultrahigh-rate optical transmission by revealing additional information about the amplitude and phase of the received optical signal over traditional intensity-level receivers, allowing transmission of multiple bits in each optical data pulse.

The mixer product provides advanced demodulation to analyze the state-of-polarization and optical phase of a phase-modulated signal relative to an externally supplied optical reference, enabling recovery of the phase-polarization constellation for dual-polarization quadrature phase-shift keyed (DP-QPSK) data transmission. The NeoPhotonics coherent mixer requires no power, operates across the C- or L-band, and is based on planar integration, utilizing high-volume semiconductor production methods.

NeoPhotonics also announced the initial availability of its demodulator for differential quadrature phase-shift keyed (DQPSK) data transmission. The company's DQPSK demodulator consists of two PIC integrated delay line interferometers (DLIs), providing in-phase and quadrature analysis of differentially phase-encoded signals. To accommodate the unpredictable and varying nature of the received signal polarization, NeoPhotonics says its DQPSK demodulator exhibits extremely low sensitivity to polarization variations.

"Our photonic integrated circuit design and fabrication capabilities have enabled us to achieve both the high optical performance required for these products and to ramp production volumes in record time. Only photonic integrated circuits provide the high performance, compact size, temperature range, and volume production capability required for these next-generation products," says Wupen Yuen, PhD, vice president of engineering for NeoPhotonics.

NeoPhotonics is exhibiting at ECOC (stand 613 in the Austria Centre, Sept. 21–23) the new products described here as well as a complete portfolio of MEMS- and PIC-based optical components and a line of transceiver products in SFF, SFP, and XFP form factors.

Tony Ticknor, PhD, director of R&D at NeoPhotonics, will provide a presentation on "PLC-based Hybrid Integration Devices" in the "Monolithic and Hybrid Photonic Integrated Transceivers for Advanced Modulation Formats" workshop at ECOC on Sunday, Sept. 20 at 2:30 pm.


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