News

19 March 2010

 

Advanced Photonix launches CCRx-compliant compact 100G coherent receiver

Picometrix LLC of Ann Arbor, MI, USA, a subsidiary of Advanced Photonix Inc (which designs and makes silicon, InP- and GaAs-based photodetectors, subsystems, and terahertz instrumentation), has made available a compact coherent receiver targeting the emerging 100G optical communications market.

The firm has two configurations for its CR-100A compact coherent receiver (currently sampling to subsystem and equipment makers for system-level testing): one incorporating an internal polarizing beam splitter (PBS) and one without. Incorporating technologies including optical beam splitters, mixers, high-speed photodiode arrays and amplifier arrays in a compact high-performance package, the CR-100A receiver will be fully qualified and released for volume production in second-half 2010.

The CR-100A is the first in a planned suite of coherent receivers (CR) targeting next-generation 40G, 100G and beyond line-side telecom networks using the DP-QPSK (dual-polarization quadrature phase shift keying) coherent modulation format. In addition to 100G, Picometrix’s CR product platform will serve as the basis for next-generation 40G line-side coherent receivers.

Coherent transmission offers the benefit of being mostly immune to impairments intrinsic to optical fiber plants. This eliminates the need for optical amplification and dispersion compensation, greatly reducing total system cost. Coherent transmission systems also reduce network latency, which is critical for real-time applications such as stock and commodity trading.

The CR-100A supports four 32 Gbaud outputs (128Gb/s), covers both C and L bands, and is compliant with the compact form-factor recently established by the CCRx multi-source agreement (MSA) and the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) 100G optical receiver implementation agreement.

“We have been at the forefront of 100G coherent receiver development during the past year through close cooperation with the major OEM customers of optical communication equipment,” says Robin Risser, Picometrix’s general manager and API's chief financial officer. “Our initial product shipments this quarter have enabled our customers to develop their 100G systems, and our fully qualified product will support their initial field trial deployments over the next year,” he adds. “We have experienced robust customer demand for our CR-100A family of products as they develop their first-generation 100G systems,” Risser continues. “We expect the market to enter its growth phase within 18–24 months.”

Picometrix will exhibit the compact coherent receiver and its full line of receivers at next week’s Optical Fiber Communication Conference & Exposition (OFC 2010) in San Diego, CA (23–25 March).

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