Alcatel Optronics introduced a range of addressable opto-components that can be remotely controlled by an industry-standard communication platform.
Gérald Chrétien, director of product marketing, said the components will improve the time-to-market of new systems, increase flexibility and reduce maintenance costs.
"We have integrated a high-speed communication port into the optical components and, by using the industry standard I2C interface bus, the devices can transfer information. Many devices can be connected on a bus and each device has a unique address."
The platform, called the Address-able Optical Solution (AOS), allows laser sources, transponders, amplifiers and multiplexers to be remotely controlled.
Parameters and alarms can be monitored and adjusted without requiring a visit.
Now devices in a subsystem can be changed to allow system upgrades to be completed more efficiently. For instance, a future wide-band tunable source capable of 80 channels will have the same footprint and protocol as a narrowband 16 channel device.
The addressable optical solution will already be familiar to some players, added Chrétien; the reconfigurable 2.5Gbit/s interface introduced last year was the first of this family. Today, the 10Gbit/s 300-pin multi-source agreement (MSA) has also adopted this concept.