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In conjunction with this week’s Optical Fiber Communication conference and National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference (OFC/NFOEC 2008) in San Diego, CA, USA, common specifications have been announced for pigtail-type optical devices based on the 40Gb/s miniature device multi-source agreement (XLMD-MSA), introduced in March 2007 by Eudyna Devices Inc, Mitsubishi Electric Corp, NEC Electronics Corp, Oki Electric Industry Co Ltd, Opnext Inc and Sumitomo Electric Industries Ltd.

The specifications detail the external-modulation laser transmitter devices with built-in driver ICs and the PIN photodiode with transimpedance amplifier (PIN-TIA) receiver devices that comply with the interface standard for SONET OC-768 synchronous optical networking at a transmission rate of 40Gb/s.

The XLMD-MSA specifications include:

• mechanical dimensions and pin assignments of pigtail-type optical devices;
• a high-speed electrical interface using dual SMPM connectors (small-sized coaxial connectors specified in MIL-STD-348A, such as GPPO);
• optical and electrical characteristics.

The metropolitan area networks (MAN), local area networks (LAN) and storage area networks (SAN) that form the backbone of broadband infrastructure currently use predominantly 10Gb/s optical transmission interfaces. The XLMD-MSA aims to establish compatible sources of 40Gb/s optical transmitter and receiver devices embedded into corresponding 40Gb/s optical transceiver modules. The agreement should accelerate the growth of the 40Gb/s transceiver module market, say the member firms. All members aim to promote MSA-compliant products in order to achieve consistent customer delivery and market growth.

The XLMD-MSA committee says that, in accordance with the future standardization of 40Gb/s pluggable optical transceivers, it will continue to discuss corresponding optical device specifications.

See related item:

Optical chip and module manufacturers target 40 Gbit/s solution with Multi-Source Agreement

Search: Eudyna Mitsubishi Electric NEC Electronics Oki Electric Opnext Sumitomo Electric

Visit: www.xlmdmsa.org