Oclaro, a leading optical components supplier in San Jose, California, is illustrating its strength in indium phosphide integration to deliver differentiated products. At OFC 2015 it reported nice progress of the much-anticipated analog coherent CFP2 (CFP2-ACO) module. Oclaro also highlighted unique solutions for data center applications, a competitive yet expanding market.
Oclaro is the industry-leading developer of the CFP2-ACO, a highly integrated module for 100G metro transmission. As an early proponent of the solution, the company announced it is shipping beta units to customers and anticipates general availability later this year.
Other telecom products announced by the vendor include
- a CFP4 transceiver that supports transmission to 10km – it is used on the client side of DWDM transmission and will be ramping in production next quarter
- a dual micro-integrated tunable laser assembly designed for 400G transmission.
Oclaro showcased access modules and technology, signaling its intent to play a bigger role in the access segment. It demonstrated tunable DWDM PON with ADVA Optical Networking, offering a low-cost tunable laser approach – there is wide interest in using WDM in PON, but transceiver cost is a major factor slowing adoption. Oclaro also introduced a high-temperature tunable SFP+ transceiver that could find use in fiber-to-the-home and wireless front-haul applications, and the vendor demonstrated a 28G transceiver (SFP28) for new storage and data center architectures and potentially for next-generation front-haul.
The SFP28 demonstration used technology that has broad applicability. It is based on Oclaro’s lens-integrated surface-emitting laser (LISEL). The technology is attractive because it can be processed as a single-mode laser array, the lasers are directly modulated and can run uncooled, and hermetic packaging is not necessary. Oclaro demonstrated 2km links with a QSFP28-compatible board-mounted optical engine, surpassing the 500m defined in the PSM4 multisource agreement.
Oclaro is on track to grow revenues with its telecom products and is expanding into new areas.
Daryl Inniss is practice leader for components at Ovum. For more information, visit www.ovum.com/