Agility announces universal transponder for metro and long-haul markets

March 3, 2003

March 3, 2003--Agility Communications Inc.(Santa Barbara, CA), a manufacturer of widely tunable components for metro, switching, and long-haul markets, has introduced what it claims is the industry's first universal transponder, the Agility 7100 series 10-Gbit/sec DWDM universal transponder.

Agility Communications Inc. (Santa Barbara, CA), a manufacturer of widely tunable components for metro, switching, and long-haul markets, has announced what it claims is the industry's first universal transponder, the Agility 7100 series 10-Gbit/sec DWDM universal transponder.

With the Agility 7155 covering the C-band and the 7156 covering the L-band, the Agility 7100 series offers fast tuning across 200 channels with 100-km reach, all in a small (3.5-x 4.5-inch), 300-pin multi-source agreement (MSA) package. The first commercially viable, full-band tunable transponder is integrated with Agility's Telcordia-qualified widely tunable laser.

Developed for customers looking for reduced costs and higher levels of integration, Agility's universal applications include one-time provisioning, fast switching, sparing, reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers (ROADMs), and SONET protection switching spanning both metro and long-haul markets. The company will be demonstrating the 7100 series at Optical Fiber Communication (OFC) Conference and Expo in Atlanta on March 24-28.

The Agility 7100 universal transponder is the result of integrating a transmitter and receiver in the same physical package. Leveraging the Agility 20-mW CW widely tunable laser, the Agility universal transponder 7155 and 7156 are designed for use in DWDM systems spanning the entire C-band, providing tunability for 200 ITU channels with 25-GHz spacing via an I2C interface.

Specifically, the Agility 7155 covers the C-band and the 7156 covers the L-band. The Agility 7100 is available in the 300-pin MSA footprint and supports 10-Gigabit long-reach applications. The Agility 7100 has a built-in optical blanking shutter used during wavelength tuning; a built-in variable optical attenuator (VOA) for automatic transmitter output power control; and modulator pre-chirp of 0 or ¿0.7.

System applications that can be leveraged with the Agility universal transponder include SONET/SDH 10-Gigabit Ethernet applications as well as one-time provisioning (OTP) of transmission wavelength, dynamic wavelength provisioning for reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexing (OADM) applications, and wavelength switching for optical core networks. Users can select operating speeds from 9.96 to 11.1 Gbits/sec for SONET/SDH, or 10-Gigabit Ethernet with or without forward-error correction (FEC).

The Agility 7100 universal transponder will be available for customers to sample in March 2003. The product will be showcased at OFC 2003, March 24-28, in booth #4232 at the Atlanta Convention Center.