Aegis Lightwave to Demo Wavelength- Tunable Receiver for PON Networks

Aegis Lightwave (News - Alert) specializing in tunable optical filter technology will demonstrate a wavelength-tunable receiver for wavelength-agile passive optical networks or PON at OFC/NFOEC 2010.

The demonstration will include the results obtained in a laboratory trial of coexistence of wavelength-agile PON with existing Gigabit PON or GPON, said company sources.

A wavelength-agile PON system has four times the downstream bandwidth compared to currently deployed GPON or GEPON systems, which operate at a downstream bit rate of 2.5 Gbps. The tunable receiver technology developed by Aegis will be able to eliminate downstream bandwidth bottlenecks which occur due to growing consumer demand for video services on home entertainment systems and mobile devices.

Wavelength-agile ONT systems deployed in subscribers’ homes or at wireless cell sites will be able to avoid latencies at the edges of the communications network and also improve user experience on the internet, said company officials.

Aegis developed wavelength-tunable receivers are capable of enabling wavelength-agile ONT systems to receive four different laser wavelengths, each transmitting to the GPON standard. This allows service providers to add these laser wavelengths incrementally, thus lowering their initial capital expenditures.

They can also dedicate wavelengths to high bandwidth subscribers and each wavelength operates over the existing PON infrastructure at a bit rate of 2.5 Gbps for a downstream bandwidth of 10 Gbps.

“Optical re-configurability and dense wavelength division multiplexing are ubiquitous features of today’s core optical networks,” said Jeffrey Farmer, president and CEO, Aegis Lightwave.

“Our tunable filters extend such wavelength-selective applications to the edge of the passive optical network to allow service providers to multiply their downstream bandwidth at a very low incremental cost,” Farmer added.

The company manufactures wavelength-tunable filters by employing mature semiconductor processes. The technology leveraged by Aegis Lightwave is reliable and the tunable filters are deployed in fiber-optic communication networks for optical channel monitoring applications.

Aegis Lightwave provides various cost-effective optical channel monitoring solutions, based on its Active Thin Films technology. It builds low-cost wavelength-tunable components and modules that are easily manufactured and widely adopted by the semiconductor industry.