Oclaro Inc of San Jose, CA, USA, which provides lasers and optical components, modules and subsystems for the optical communications, industrial, and consumer laser markets, has announced a standards-compliant, multi-rate DWDM tunable SFP+ optical transceiver that supports rates between 9.95Gb/s and 11.3Gb/s and is tunable across the entire C-band with 96 channels on the 50GHz grid defined by ITU-T.
The transceiver module complies with revision 4.1 of the SFF-8431 specification for 'Enhanced Small Form Factor Pluggable Module SFP+'. The tunable SFP+ supports multiple receiver interfaces, including PIN or APD photodetectors for the optical interface as well as limiting or linear electrical interfaces, based on customer requirements.
The tunable SFP+ transceiver module targets next-generation enterprise, metro and regional optical network equipment, continuing the replacement of fixed-wavelength modules and of non-pluggable ports. Oclaro says that this form factor allows network equipment manufacturers to reduce the size and power consumption for 10G connections while supporting network operators' rapidly increasing capacity needs driven by data-heavy network applications. It will also allow form-factor commonality between client- and line-side, offering greater flexibility in equipment configurations.
"I expect the volume of 10G DWDM SFP+ transceivers to grow significantly over the coming years," says Andrew Schmitt, principal analyst, Optical at market analyst firm Infonetics Research. "The advent of 10G tunable SFP+ transceivers in the market will accelerate that trend as tunability is critical for minimizing inventory and enabling flexible rapid service provisioning," he adds. "This is an important step towards meeting the world's growing bandwidth demands with space-, power- and cost-efficiency network solutions." Schmitt believes.
"We are leveraging the technology building blocks and chip designs that enabled our leadership in 10G tunable MSA transponders and tunable XFP – in particular the monolithically integrated laser Mach-Zehnder [ILMZ] design," says Tadayuki Kanno, president, Oclaro Japan Inc & general manager, Modules & Devices business unit. He specifically cities the firm's in-house compact, low-power tunable TOSA (transmit optical subassembly) based on a proprietary monolithically integrated laser Mach-Zehnder (ILMZ) chip.
The tunable SFP+ transceiver will be sampling in fourth-quarter 2013.
Oclaro is meeting with customers in room MR3 during the European Conference and Exhibition on Optical Communications (ECOC 2013) in London, UK (23-25 September).
