March 21, 2003--The U.S. government has awarded Agility Communications, Inc. a contract for the development of widely tunable lasers with monolithically integrated modulators (EMLs). Valued at $5.5 million if fully funded through three phases, the contract was awarded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under its Chip-Scale Wavelength Division Multiplexing (CS-WDM) Program.
The CS-WDM program's goal is to develop multifunctional photonic chips for WDM networks on military platforms. The government is testing Agility's platforms in the context of support for intelligent networks and systems for military applications. For example, Agility's widely tunable EMLs are currently being tested for a CS-WDM program. According to Agility, the results show that over a distance of 1,080 km, the company's 2.5 Gbit/sec EML performed as well as a DFB with an external lithium niobate modulator.
"These results show that monolithically integrated modulators have very small frequency chirps," said Jag Shah, program manager for the CS-WDM Program at DARPA.
