April 7, 2004 Besançon, France--Photline Technologies is launching the MBC-LN series, a family of modulator bias controllers specially designed to optimize performances of lithium niobate modulators in systems and laboratories.
Lithium niobate (LiNb03 external modulators have been widely used since the
mid-nineties in long haul optical networks for their ability to modulate optical signal from 1300-nm and 1550-nm laser diodes with short transition times and without chirp. Thanks to their broad wavelength performance, they currently also offer modulation solutions to 1064 nm and other near infrared lasers.
LiNb03 intensity modulators are interferometric devices, Mach-Zehnder type, and exhibit a sine transfer function. Although highly stable components, their working point can suffer slow drift due to variations of external conditions and that drift may result in variations of key performances like extinction ratio.
The MBC-LN series is a family of bias controllers specially designed to stabilize the working point of LiNb03 Mach-Zehnder modulators by monitoring the bias voltage applied on the DC electrodes of the devices. They use digital signal processing based on an original FFT principle to allow to easy change of the dithering frequency of the tone signal, so as to adapt to a wide variety of applications. MBC controllers can lock any modulator at the following points of its transfer function : MIN or MAX for applications such as pulse generation, QUAD+ or QUAD- for applications such as analog or digital transmissions.
MBC controllers are available as bench top turnkey units and as OEM boards for integration in systems.