Irvine, CA, April 8, 2003. Newport has announced a new addition to its Lambda Commander Programmable Spectral processor family. The new Lambda Commander OSP 9500 Programmable Spectral Source incorporates both an ASE broadband light source and a Programmable Spectral Processor, for researchers working in the C and L band telecom wavelength ranges.
Two versions of the OSP-9500 are offered, one with ASE source covering 1520-1560nm (C-Band), and the other covering 1520-1620nm (C+L-Band) wavelength ranges. The Lambda Commander OSP-9500 is a revolutionary solution that is ideal for fiber optic applications, such as WDM source simulation for testing of fiber optic components in R&D and production, as well as a tunable light source to interrogate and characterize fiber Bragg sensors. The Lambda Commander OSP-9500 offers a flexible, powerful, new approach to optical spectrum processing for precision optical applications in remote fiber optic sensing, optical telecom and life/health science markets.
The Lambda Commander gives users complete control of optical spectrum profiles, to simulate a multitude of spectral source types utilizing CiDRA Corporation's use of the Texas Instruments Digital Light Processing technology.
The Lambda Commander utilizes a diffraction grating to disperse the incident light across the MEMS based Digital Micromirror Device and rapidly switches the individual mircomirrors on-and-off, allowing arbitrary spectral shaping and transformation of the optical input spectral profile into a completely new optical output spectrum. This gives the user full control of the intrinsic profile to reshape and define with great precision the exact spectral profile desired for testing or simulation. The Lambda Commander comes preconfigured with fiber inputs and can apply any arbitrary transformation to the original optical signal.
There are millions of spectral shapes possible that can be as simple as passing selected narrow wavelengths and blocking others to as complex as time varying mathematical functions with bandwidths of up to 100nm.
According to Hector Lara, Photonics Instruments Product Line Manager, "The Lambda Commander has found applications inside R&D laboratories and in the high volume manufacturing QA processes, serving as a full wavelength and amplitude controller of signals for passive component characterization, testing and simulation. Optical component spectral-characterization can be reduced to a single measurement, and complete optical system analysis automated where wavelength and amplitude control are required."
For more information, visit www.newport.com/lambdacomander .
Laser Focus World