San Jose, CA, July 28, 2004--Bookham Technology (Oxfordshire, UK), JDS Uniphase (San Jose, CA), Northlight Optronics (Jarfalla, Sweden), T-Networks (Allentown, PA), and TriQuint Optoelectronics (Breinigsville, PA) have announced a new multi-source agreement (MSA) for standardizing 1550 nm 2.5 Gb/s cooled transmitter optical subassemblies (TOSAs). A standard cooled, wavelength-specific TOSA would be a key component in building transmission systems capable of serving multiple market segments, which would reduce system developers' costs while expanding performance and offering new functionality.
"After co-existing for many years, the high-performance and proprietary telecom world is converging with the manufacturing focused datacom world," said Tom Hausken, director of optical components at the research firm Strategies Unlimited (Mountain View, CA). "Making high-performance yet standards-based subcomponents is necessary for this convergence, but it is hard to do in practice. The cooled TOSA MSA, led by JDS Uniphase, offers this remarkable opportunity for the industry to reach that goal."
The new standard for a miniature, high performance cooled TOSA enables several advanced capabilities. Systems developers can integrate dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) in 2.5 Gb/s small form factor pluggable (SFP) transceivers. This will permit network equipment and transceiver/transponder manufacturers to build a single platform serving both datacom and telecom applications, including 2.5 Gb/s DWDM SFP and line cards. The new MSA also enables optical transmission up to 640 km, rather than the traditional 80 km and employs pluggable optics for easier, less costly manufacturing.
A butterfly package design has been the historical choice for DWDM applications. The cooled TOSA MSA specification is one-fifth the size and with one-quarter to one-third lower power consumption of legacy butterfly packages. This provides customers with similar optical performance as current butterfly based directly modulated and electro-absorption modulated lasers, but with greater options and reduced cost.