KAWASAKI, Japan and TOKYO -- Fujitsu Limited and Fujitsu Laboratories Limited today announced the development of optical amplifier technology for use in optical access systems that link subscribers to central offices. The new optical amplifier technology has the ability to quadruple the splitting number and double transmission distance.

The use of optical aggregation networks, in which optical signals between a central office and many subscribers are optically passed along, rather than converted into electrical signals, has been proposed as one way to reduce the constantly growing amount of electrical power consumed by networking equipments. Although passive optical networks (PONs)(1), which increase transmission speeds in both downstream and upstream from the prevailing speed of 1 Gbps to 10 Gbps, are now starting to be deployed commercially, there are constraints in using them for optical aggregation networks because the number of optical network terminals (ONTs) for the most commonly used PON is typically limited to 32 connections and its transmission distance is also limited around 20 km.

Fujitsu Ltd. (Tokyo: 6702; London: FUJ; OTC: FJTSY)