LOS ANGELES -- NeoPhotonics Corporation (NYSE: NPTN), a leading designer and manufacturer of hybrid photonic integrated circuit based modules and subsystems for bandwidth-intensive, high speed communications networks, today announced that it will demonstrate a 16x16 multicast switch (MCS) without drop side amplifiers on March 26 here at the Optical Fiber Communications (OFC) Conference in Los Angeles, California. The 16x16 MCS will consist of four modular 4x16 MCSs which can be cascaded to encompass 16 directions.

NeoPhotonics modular MCSs are designed to reduce first install costs of contentionless ROADMs and to provide customers with a “pay as you grow” approach for future degree and add/drop port expansion. For example, for degree expansion, after first installing a 4x16 MCS for 4 directions, a second one can be installed as needed, and without disrupting traffic, to achieve an 8x16 configuration, which accommodates 8 directions and provides 16 add/drop ports. A third module achieves 12x16 and a fourth achieves 16x16. Similarly, for add/drop port expansion, additional MCSs can be added to additional WSS ports to achieve Nx32, Nx48 and so on.

A significant portion of the cost of an MCS is due to the necessity of adding optical amplifiers on the drop side to recover the optical loss induced by the MCS. NeoPhotonics 4x16 MCS is based on NeoPhotonics proven photonic integrated circuit (PIC) technology, which has been in volume production for fifteen years. NeoPhotonics PIC technology enables a switch design with sufficiently low loss in the modular 4x16 MCS, which, when coupled with the high sensitivity of NeoPhotonics Intradyne Coherent Receiver (ICR), eliminates the need for drop side amplifiers in metro OSNR environments.

NeoPhotonics will describe this modular approach in Paper M3A.5 entitled “Degree-Expandable Colorless, Directionless, and Contentionless ROADM Without Drop-Side EDFAs” presented by Wen-Jr Jiang at OFC on Monday, March 23 at 5:30 PM. An associated interactive demonstration of the MCS, also using NeoPhotonics ICR and ultra-narrow linewith external cavity tunable laser, will be given on Thursday, March 26 from 10:00 – 12:00 in the Exhibit Hall (South Hall), Interactive Demo Poster Area.

“As we see the market need for true ‘Colorless, Directionless and Contentionless’, or CDC , ROADMs becoming more evident every day, we are excited to demonstrate how our modular MCS can make deployment of CDC ROADMs cost effective for carriers through ‘pay as you grow’ deployments and the elimination of drop side amplifiers,” said Tim Jenks, Chairman and CEO of NeoPhotonics. “This demonstration combines several elements of our hybrid photonic integration technology, including our low loss silica waveguide MCS, our hybrid silica/InP ICR and our external cavity ultra-narow linewidth tunable laser,” continued Mr. Jenks.

In addition to its modular MCS, NeoPhotonics will exhibit at OFC its suite of standard and small form factor PIC-based components for 100G coherent line-side applications, along with its 100G client-side CFP2 and CFP4 transceivers and its next generation transceivers for access networks at Booth 1511 in the Los Angeles Convention Center, March 24-26.

NeoPhotonics Corp. (NYSE: NPTN)