2 March 2011

Civcom launches first multi-rate tunable optical transceiver for SAN

At next week’s Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exhibition/National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference (OFC/NFOEC 2011) in Los Angeles (8–10 March), optoelectronic module maker Civcom of Petach Tikva, Israel is launching what it claims is the industry’s first multi-rate transceiver for dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) telecom and data optical networks.

The new MLR transmitter/receiver supports 1–10Gbps rates, allowing usage of the same line-card as network capacity grows, reducing a client's total cost of ownership (TCO). The transceiver is a small-size long-reach widely tunable module, suited to storage-area network (SAN) applications. Channel capacity upgrades on SAN systems traditionally required the replacement of the line-card array on both transmitter and receiver ends. The new module allows the flexibility of using the same card as system capacity is upgraded, saving additional lifecycle investments.

“Our customers support the world’s highest-capacity, leading network and telecom carriers,” says Yair Itzhar, VP worldwide sales & marketing. “With the new module Civcom uses its expertise in highly tunable DWDM components to offer the flexibility required for operators supporting the rapidly growing SAN market,” he adds.

Civcom says that system vendors and line-card manufacturers can now offer an unprecedented broad range of applications, bit rates and channel flexibility:

• 10 Gigabit Ethernet at 10.3125Gbps;
  
• Legacy 1 Gigabit Ethernet at 1.25Gbps;
  
• 10 Gigabit Fiber Channel (GFC) at 10.51875Gbps;
  
• 8 GFC (8.5Gbps), 4 GFC (4.25Gbps) 2 GFC (2.125Gbps) 1 GFC (1.0625Gbps); and
  
• QDR, DDR, and SDR Infiniband.

As is the case with all Civcom’s FREE LIGHT transponder modules, the MLR interface is compatible with the 300-pin MSA and I2C interface and uses a widely tunable laser to cover the entire C-band. It uses a negative- or zero-chirp Mach–Zehnder indium phosphide (InP) modulator to enable high performance under OSNR (optical signal-to-noise ratio) load across the entire C-band and over long distances. A configurable CDR (clock and data recovery) is used to tune the transceiver between data rates of 1.06, 1.25, 2.12, 4.25, 8.5, 10.3 and 10.5Gbps through standard I2C commands.

Tags: Civcom Optical transceiver

Visit: www.civcom.com

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