Teledyne LeCroy returns to optical modulation analyzer market thanks to Southern Photonics

Teledyne LeCroy, which lost a partner for addressing coherent modulation analysis requirements when Tektronix bought Optametra, is back in the game with the help of Southern Photonics. Both companies are displaying the Southern Photonics-developed IQScope-RT coherent optical receiver paired with the Teledyne LeCroy LabMaster 10 Zi oscilloscope at their respective booths at ECOC in Amsterdam this week.

Optical coherent modulation analysis typically requires an oscilloscope and a coherent optical receiver. Test vendors such as Agilent and EXFO have developed both instruments, while other oscilloscope vendors, such as Tektronix and Teledyne LeCroy, originally partnered with independent coherent optical receiver developer Optametra to address this market. However, Tektronix acquired Optametra in July 2011, which left Teledyne LeCroy without a dance partner.

Enter Southern Photonics. The New Zealand-based company developed its IQScope to work with equivalent-time oscilloscopes and launched it late last year (see “Southern Photonics launches optical modulation analyzer based on equivalent-time oscilloscopes”). The company now has developed a version of the IQScope that works with real-time oscilloscopes (hence the “RT”) specifically for Teledyne LeCroy, according to Southern Photonics’ Iannick Monfils in a conversation at his company’s ECOC booth. In fact, the IQScope-RT carries the Teledyne LeCroy brand.

The result is that Teledyne LeCroy can offer an optical modulation analyzer in which the coherent optical receiver accepts a single optical input and demodulates a DP-QPSK or 16-QAM signal into two I-Q electrical signal output pairs with bandwidth up to 45 GHz. It then passes these output pairs to the Teledyne LeCroy LabMaster 10 Zi oscilloscope. The real-time scope, which offers a sampling speed of 160 GS/s and a bandwidth of up to 65 GHz, provides real-time analog-to-digital acquisition capabilities for the four electrical signal inputs. Optical Modulation Analysis software handles post-processing of the acquired data to perform clock recovery, correct for chromatic dispersion, apply receiver equalization, and display a variety of eye and constellation diagrams and measurement parameters.

List price for the full set up is expected to start at $495,000. The IQScope-RT Optical Modulation Analyzer with analysis software alone will list for approximately $200,000. Monfil says he expects shipments to start in either December this year or January 2013.

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