August 19, 2004 San Jose, CA -- Comcore Technologies Inc., supplier of fused fiber products, has announced the general availability of its newly developed 980- / 1550-nm WDMs. Mainly used in erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs), the 980- /1550-nm WDM can combine the optical signal at 1550 nm and pump power at 980 nm into one common output, which is then spliced to the erbium-doped fiber for power amplification.
Conventionally, the 980- /1550-nm WDMs can only be made with same type of fiber, such as Corning HI1060 Flex, OFS 980 Coupler, or the equivalent, say Comcore representatives. Due to the mismatch in Mode Field Diameter (MFD) between these 980-nm fiber and SMF-28 fiber, a specially programmed fusion splicer has to be used when a WDM is spliced to the signal fiber (typically Corning SMF-28e Fiber); however, large splicing loss is usually expected, says the company.
Designed to simplify the splicing process and reduce the splicing loss between signal fibers to the WDM, Comcore's newly developed WDM is fabricated with two dissimilar fibers: Standard Corning SMF-28e fiber for signal (1550-nm) input port and Corning HI1060 Flex or OFS 980 Coupler fiber for pump (980-nm) input and common output port. As a result, the new WDM can offer many advantages over the conventional design, including 1) reducing typical 0.15 dB of above-mentioned splicing loss, which is very critical to EDFA performance; 2) improving the overall EDFA performance especially in optical noise figure; and 3) lowering the assembly cost through assembly time reduction and easing the requirements for manufacturing equipment (since it does not require specially programmed fusion splicer to splice standard SMF-28e fiber).
As with other Comcore fused fiber products, the newly released WDM is manufactured using the company's proprietary superfusion fusion and packaging processes, which can guarantee the component's reliability and full compliance with Telecordia GR-1221 standard.