EXFO Inc. (Nasdaq:EXFO) (TSX:EXF) has added features to its PSO-200 Optical Modulation Analyzer to expand its utility from the lab environment to the manufacturing floor.
The new PSO-200 capabilities include time-resolved error vector magnitude (EVM) analysis, which EXFO developed to enable fast and precise identification of transmitter impairments. (For more on time-resolved EVM, see the recent webcast, "Testing Approaches for Manufacturing of 100G DP-QPSK Transmitters.") The optical modulation analyzer also provides bit-error-rate (BER) and symbol-error-rate (SER) computation in a gearbox designed to enable users to provide the patterns and sequences used in their transmitter to get precise mapping of errors, ITU-T and IEEE-based compliance mask tests for OOK modulation formats, as well as constellation and time-resolved EVM masks for phase-modulated signals.
EXFO also now offers an optional external local oscillator input to support the requirements for homodyne characterization. The feature can come into play when testing transmitters using lasers with larger linewidth such as 40G DQPSK modules with coherent instruments like the PSO-200.
"These new features leverage the unique capability of the PSO-200 to recover time-domain information without additional signal processing, providing simple, yet powerful performance information on 40G/100G DP-QPSK transmitters," said Étienne Gagnon, EXFO's Vice-President, Wireline Division and Corporate Marketing.
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