Finisar demos dual 1x20 wavelength-selective switch at OFC/NFOEC 2013

Finisar Corp. (NASDAQ: FNSR) demonstrated several new products for telecom applications at the OFC/NFOEC show this week, including a new dual 1x20 wavelength-selective switch (WSS) and what the company claims is the industry's first direct modulated laser (DML)-based triplexer optical sub-assembly (OSA) for 10G-EPON.

The WSS demonstration showed a single device with dual independent 1x20 and 20x1 wavelength-selective switching in a compact module for high-degree colorless, directionless, and contentionless (CDC) reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer (ROADM) nodes. The company asserts that this device, like the rest of Finisar’s WSS portfolio, features wide passbands and low insertion loss, as well as Flexgrid technology, which enables hitless widening/narrowing of channels and intra-channel attenuation for equalization across a superchannel with high-resolution control. The Dual 1x20 WSS is the same size as the current 1x20 WSS and also built upon Finisar's liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS) technology.

Finisar also demonstrated the Triplexer OSA, which it claims is the industry's first DML-based OSA for 10G-EPON in power budget class PRX40. With a transmission reach up to 20 km, the triplexer OSA will cost-effectively provide both higher optical power (5dBm to 9dBm) than current electro-absorption-modulated laser (EML) devices and a higher link budget that enables split ratios greater than 1:64, Finisar says. The triplexer OSA was shown in an XFP module, but can be packaged into any form factor required, the company says.

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