Lasers & Sources

Huawei and Oclaro collaborate on tunable laser in petabit optical cross-connect

March 7, 2012

San Jose, CA--Oclaro and Huawei announced an agreement to develop Petabit Photonic Cross-Connect (PPXC) technology. As part of the collaboration, Oclaro has optimized its InP tunable laser technology.

Conard Holton

San Jose, CA--Oclaro (NASDAQ: OCLR) and Huawei (Shenzhen, China) announced an agreement to develop Petabit Photonic Cross-Connect (PPXC) technology. As part of the collaboration, Oclaro has optimized its indium phosphide (InP) tunable laser technology to deliver prototypes of ultra-fast switching lasers that enabled Huawei to develop the PPXC system. Huawei will be showing a live demo of this PPXC system in a private suite at this week's OFC/NFOEC show in Los Angeles, CA.

"Fast tunable lasers have great potential in Huawei's future optical network architectures and we are excited to see that Oclaro has successfully developed this enabling laser system with nanosecond tuning time," said Changtian Cai, President of Huawei Transport Network. "We believe that all-optical cross connect technology will give an unparalleled advantage to ultra large capacity OTN [optical transport network] switch clusters of future transport backbone networks, large data centers, and other application scenarios."

To date, Oclaro has shipped over 300,000 tunable lasers into the field as part of its iTLA, TTA, tunable XFP, and SFF tunable transponder products. More recently, the company has demonstrated that fully monolithic photonic integrated circuits (PICs) in InP.

About the Author

Conard Holton | Editor at Large

Conard Holton has 25 years of science and technology editing and writing experience. He was formerly a staff member and consultant for government agencies such as the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and the International Atomic Energy Agency, and engineering companies such as Bechtel. He joined Laser Focus World in 1997 as senior editor, becoming editor in chief of WDM Solutions, which he founded in 1999. In 2003 he joined Vision Systems Design as editor in chief, while continuing as contributing editor at Laser Focus World. Conard became editor in chief of Laser Focus World in August 2011, a role in which he served through August 2018. He then served as Editor at Large for Laser Focus World and Co-Chair of the Lasers & Photonics Marketplace Seminar from August 2018 through January 2022. He received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, with additional studies at the Colorado School of Mines and Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.