NeoPhotonics completes phase I to increase production of narrow linewidth tunable lasers (NLW-TL)

OFC/NFOEC 2012, SAN JOSE, USA: NeoPhotonics Corp., a leading designer and manufacturer of photonic integrated circuit, or PIC, based modules and subsystems for bandwidth-intensive, high speed communications networks, announced that the company has completed the first phase in its plan to significantly increase production capacity of narrow linewidth tunable lasers (NLW-TL) in support of rapidly growing demand.

It has doubled NLW-TL output since initiating the production plan in the fourth calendar quarter of 2011. Demand for these products has outstripped industry capacity due to the rapid uptake of coherent optical technology coupled with industry supply constraints attributable to the flooding in Thailand in 2011.

“With the flooding in Thailand, the supply of Narrow Linewidth Tunable Lasers has become a limiting factor in the shipment of 40 and 100 Gbps coherent optical transport systems,” said Tim Jenks, chairman and CEO of NeoPhotonics. “Accordingly, we have stepped up our production to help satisfy this critical need. Since we first announced our expansion plans, we have added seven additional customers and are engaged with several more. Our first phase capacity expansion is now full and we are again expanding to help meet industry requirements. We expect the growth in demand for NLW-TLs to continue for the next several years in concert with the rapid adoption of coherent transport technology.”

NeoPhotonics NLW-TLs are compact, widely-tunable and narrow linewidth assemblies with up to 35mW launch power in the C band and 20mW in the L band. Narrow linewidths are designed to facilitate digital signal processing, which is used in coherent optical transmission to analyze the incoming signal when it is mixed with a local oscillator laser in a coherent receiver.

Coherent transmission is capable of increasing the bandwidth of an optical channel from 10 Gbps to 100Gbps, and is designed to enable carriers to add “backbone” network capacity economically and accommodate the surge of wireline and wireless broadband services hitting the network. The narrow linewidth and frequency stability of the NeoPhotonics NLW-TL are enabled by a phase-shifted DFB laser chip and proprietary packaging technology, and the laser assembly includes an integrated wavelength locker as well as electrical and firmware interfaces.