- New systems, modules and components, based on Pirelli Labs' research, will allow customers to boost performance while saving costs
22 September 2003 Rimini, Italy Lightwave Europe -- Pirelli has launched a range of "next generation" telecom equipment at ECOC 2003. The company is showing its new systems, modules and components based on the advanced research of Pirelli Labs on stand 615.
The company says it pioneered photonics and drove the evolution of optical communications in early 1990s, with the first EDFA developed and the first DWDM systems installed in operators' live networks. Pirelli is now on the road again, and says it is is "ready to play a leading role in the future of telecommunications."
"We are proud to introduce our new solutions just 18 months after Pirelli Labs was established," said Giorgio Grasso, CEO of Pirelli Labs. "Our trials have given us positive feedback and the interest shown by prospective customers testifies that we are moving in the right direction with respect to flexibility, speed and low costs for next gen optical networks."
Pirelli tunable optical components (laser and OADM) offer "superior performance", claims Grasso, while the company's adoption of nanotechnologies allows unprecedented compactness. "These are fundamental bricks in the building of new networks, whose characteristics of flexibility, easy reconfigurability, fast provisioning are supporting operators in reducing OPEX."
Pirelli Metro systems says it will "slash operator's capital expenditure thanks to CWDM adoption and novel architecture". It is now offering carrier class equipment, with networking features employable in Metro Access and in Metro Core scenarios. Pirelli says its portfolio of access modules and systems is opening the way for new broadband services, which it describes as "the engine for increasing the operators' profitability".
Tunable laser
Pirelli's new Dynamically Tunable Laser is a CW external cavity laser designed for advanced optical network systems. It offers a high output optical power and wavelength tunability over a wide band range with high spectral purity and frequency stability. The DTL C13 is designed for applications from Metro to Ultra Long Haul transmission systems at 2.5 Gbit/s, 10 Gbit/s and above.
It is designed to provide fast switching on the ITU-T 50 GHz channel grid. No wavelength locker is needed to achieve frequency stability compatible with 25GHz DWDM channel spacing.
Radio over fibre
Another new module is the Radio Over Fiber (ROF) technology based product, that enables the transmission of radio signals directly over optical fibre. The application of this technology to wireless networks allows the "remotisation" of the radio frequency processing part, or Antenna Units, from the related base band processing part, or Base Station, with the following main advantages for the Mobile Operator during the deployment of a new network.
Pirelli's ROF product line is intended to enable the remotisation through optical fibre of the Antenna Unit from the related Base Station of an UMTS (3G) wireless communication system. It is based on a self-contained electro-optic module to be integrated inside the UMTS equipment of the system vendor in order to provide the ROF remotization function.
Metro solution
Finally, Pirelli is presenting its new P-MAS system, targeted to cope with the issues of metropolitan scenarios, where synchronous traffic (like the voice telephony) and asynchronous (or packet, as IP) traffic are present and mixed.
P-MAS provides the Layer 1 CWDM multiplexing and transport functionality (transponder) over an optical fibre support to digital client signal of different protocol and bit rate. The typical applications is the fibre capacity increase in the Metro area with transport of client protocols like SDH STM-4/STM-16 and/or Sonet OC-12/OC-48 (up to 2.7 Gb/s), Gigabit Ethernet, ESCON, Fiber Channel, etc.
Metro (access and core) rings and ring or point-to-point customer premises (CPE) are the main applications for the P-MAS products. Traditional metro access and enterprise networks (based on TDM technology) suffer from some serious technical limitations: TDM networks in fact rely on very costly network timing provisions and are extremely bandwidth-inefficient and restrictive in supporting a diverse array of end-user services.