Optical components, modules and subsystems developer Oclaro Inc of San Jose, CA, USA has introduced what it says is the industry's first commercially-available dual-chip uncooled pump laser, featuring a smaller form factor, reduced cost, improved performance, and lower power consumption compared to competing cooled pumps. The dual-chip pump laser also features the new industry-standard 10-pin MSA butterfly advanced package format that delivers a smaller footprint compared to conventional 14-pin packages and includes two uncooled 500mW pump lasers in a single package. Designed for flexible grid ROADM architectures, these uncooled pumps will be on display at the OFC/NFOEC conference (19-21 March) in Anaheim, California, USA.
Oclaro’s dual-chip uncooled pump is designed for amplifier arrays, multi-stage and mid-stage access amplifiers, ROADM on blade and amplifier based line cards. These dual 500mW pumps enable smaller amplifier form factors by reducing the footprint required to accommodate the pump lasers within a multi-stage amplifier by a factor of more than 2x. This size reduction can be further improved if customers are replacing cooled pumps, since additional components, such as TEC driver circuits, will no longer be required. The pumps feature two dynamically independent, co-packaged lasers that are individually addressable and wavelength stabilized and also deliver negligible thermal and optical cross-talk through proprietary design.
In addition to the form factor reduction, this new pump laser also lowers the total module power consumption by approximately 60% compared to the power consumption of two discrete cooled pumps running at a nominal output power of 500mW, and the uncooled design enables customers to further reduce their cost through simplified control electronics and reduced component count, says the firm.
Oclaro expects to be sampling the dual-chip uncooled pump in Q3/2013.
