SAN JOSE, Calif., Feb. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- This week at the Optical Fiber
Communication Conference in San Jose, California, SDL, Inc. (NASDAQ:SDLI)
introduced a new product that offers dramatic performance benefits for erbium
doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) used in dense wavelength division multiplexed
(DWDM) communication networks. The SDL model WM40 was developed to satisfy
the power hungry needs of next generation EDFAs. These new optical amplifiers
require very high pump powers to support communication networks using as many
as 32 wavelength channels or more. The WM40 incorporates SDL's field proven,
fiber Bragg grating stabilized single-mode pump lasers to deliver more than
twice the pump power available from traditional pump lasers in the 980 nm
wavelength range.
The continuous pressure to expand the bandwidth of communication networks
is pushing network equipment vendors to increase the number of wavelength
channels transmitted through a single fiber. The optical power required to
pump EDFAs used in these networks increases in proportion to the number of
wavelength channels transmitted. The WM40 from SDL delivers kink free optical
power of more than 400 mW by combining four semiconductor lasers through a
proprietary low loss coupling scheme into one single-mode output fiber.
The WM40 design is enabled by the wavelength stability featured in the
SDLO-2500 series fiber Bragg grating stabilized module. According to Donald
R. Scifres, chairman and CEO of SDL, Inc., "We believe this product offers
significant value to our customers by delivering very high pump power in a
single fiber. As far as we know, there is nothing else on the market to match
it. Other EDFA pumping schemes for wide band, gain flattened EDFAs seem to
require more complexity and more splicing, and hence greater cost or lower
performance." |
