NeoPhotonics Corp of San Jose, CA, a vertically integrated designer and manufacturer of both indium phosphide (InP) and silica-on-silicon photonic integrated circuit (PIC)-based modules and subsystems for bandwidth-intensive, high-speed communications networks, has launched an optical line terminal (OLT) transceiver with embedded optical time-domain reflectometer (eOTDR) for Gigabit passive optical networks (GPON) in an SFP form factor and for use in fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) networks.
The eOTDR OLT transceiver was designed in collaboration with leading broadband access network equipment manufacturers and is designed to offer FTTH operators a cost-effective way to monitor their fiber infrastructure during network operation.
The transceiver represents the latest addition to NeoPhotonics' PON transceiver portfolio, which includes modules such as the mode coupling receiver (MCR) OLT - announced in September during the European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC 2012) in Amsterdam, The Netherlands - as well as a full range of GPON, GEPON (Gigabit Ethernet PON) and 10G PON transceivers.
The new eOTDR OLT SFP is designed to enable customers to provide an integrated fiber monitoring solution instead of the current standalone test & measurement approach, says chairman & CEO Tim Jenks. It is also designed to lower the overall cost of FTTH network rollout and operation, he adds.
FTTH has become a key wireline broadband access technology, and PON represents one of the most widely deployed network architectures, says NeoPhotonics. In their continuous drive to reduce network operations costs, telecoms carriers around the world are integrating fault location and management into their operating systems to minimize traffic outages and revenue loss, the firm adds.
These practices are already common in high-bandwidth links at the core of the network, but with data rates growing in broadband access networks, the need is growing to do the same at the edge of the network. NeoPhotonics says that its eOTDR OLT is designed to address that need as its monitoring functions can be integrated with the network management system, allowing a continuous view of the access fiber infrastructure.
