March 7, 2006 Peachtree City, GA -- Furukawa Electric has developed an Athermal Arrayed Wave Guide (AWG) that the company says is robust enough for outdoor fiber-optic communications installations yet precise enough to avoid unwanted increases in insertion loss or crosstalk.
The company says its athermal AWG utilizes unique packaging technology that enables it to operate in temperatures ranging from minus 30°C up to 70°C. According to the company, the module's design leaves the core technology of the traditional AWG - the planar light circuit chip ¿ intact, and achieves wider temperature compensation with the packaging. The company notes that previous market attempts at developing athermal AWGs involved modifying the PLC chip, which resulted in higher insertion loss and higher crosstalk. The company says its new design achieves better chip utilization through reduced chip waste.
The company contends that, in addition to the traditional use of AWGs for mux/demux in long-haul networks, more telecom system companies are now using AWG for ROADMs [reconfigurable optical add/drop module] in metro and regional networks.
"We're now also beginning to see the deployment of AWGs in WDM-PON for FTTH networks," observes Ike Tateyama, optical components sales manager for Furukawa America Inc. "Japan and Korea are moving steadily in this direction with new FTTH architectures using AWG. It's the newest generation of PON [passive optical networks]," Tateyama said.
Key characteristics of the Furukawa athermal AWG, according to the company, include: lower temperature dependence of center wavelength (less than +/-0.015 nm); compliance with Telcordia standards GR 1209 and 1221 for high reliability; and semi-flat and Gaussian spectrum shapes.
The product is on display at this week's OFC/NFOEC 2006 conference in Anaheim, CA, in the company's booth #1513.