Optoplex ships tunable OADM

Fiber Optics Weekly Update, Nov 15, 2002

With the industry's drive toward flexible and cost-saving optical networks, Optoplex Corporation, a pioneer in the development of tunable filters for removal and insertion of channels in DWDM networks, announced that it has shipped its first-generation tunable band optical add/drop multiplexer (TB-OADM).

Based on its proprietary opto-mechanical design and state-of-the-art thin-film coating and offering either a single channel drop or a banded 2 or 4 channel option, Optoplex's tunable filter are the first in the industry that can match the spectral performance of a fixed DWDM filter while can be accurately set to any ITU channel within the C- or L-band with a simple digital command. It is noteworthy that the tunable band option is not achievable by other competing technologies in the tunable field, such as those based on Fabry-Perot Etalon, Bragg grating or ring resonators.

To further enhance the tunable feature of its TB-OADM and provide a turn-key solution to service providers, Optoplex also promotes its Subband demux that can separates DWDM signals into 4 sub-bands. Without any moving parts and temperature control, this device is particularly useful to demux/mux any 4 contiguous channels when used in conjunction with Optoplex's TB-OADM that can add/drop 4 contiguous channels. The subsystem has very low insertion loss for the express channel.

While network operators seek for ways to take the existing huge bandwidth capacity and turn it into revenue generating services, the need to provide ways of peeling off streams of light signals from bundles of wavelengths passing through a node will continued to evolve and grow. Compared to the currently adapted reconfigurable OADM based on switching or Broadcast-and-Select architecture, tunable filter based TB-OADM offers huge cost saving and better performance while providing the flexibility required in meeting unpredictable and on-demand bandwidth routing. Optoplex plans to have the TB-OADM/Sub-band demux subsystem fully pass the Telcordia reliability requirement by the first quarter of 2003.