Furukawa Goes Outside

PEACHTREE CITY, Ga. -- Furukawa Electric Co. Ltd. has developed a new Athermal Arrayed Wave Guide (AWG) robust enough for outdoor fiber optic communications installations yet precise enough to avoid unwanted increases in insertion loss or crosstalk. Furukawa America Inc. will introduce the new athermal AWG at the upcoming OFC/NFOEC 2006 Conference in Anaheim, CA, March 7-9, in booth 1513.

Furukawa’s athermal AWG utilizes unique packaging technology that enables it to operate in temperatures ranging from minus 30 degrees Celsius up to 70 degrees Celsius. The module’s design leaves the core technology of the traditional AWG – the planar light circuit chip – intact and achieves wider temperature compensation with the packaging. Previous market attempts at developing athermal AWGs involved modifying the PLC chip, which resulted in higher insertion loss and higher crosstalk. Furukawa’s new design actually achieves better chip utilization through reduced chip waste.

In addition to the traditional use of AWGs for Mux/Demux in long-haul networks, more telecom system companies are now using AWG for ROADM (reconfigurable optical add/drop module) in metro and regional networks.

“We’re now also beginning to see the deployment of AWGs in WDM-PON for FTTh networks,” said Ike Tateyama, optical components sales manager for Furukawa America Inc. “Japan and Korea are moving steadily in this direction with new FTTh architectures using AWG. It’s the newest generation of Passive Optical Networks (PON),” Tateyama said.

Furukawa Electric Co. Ltd.