Video: Finisar WaveShaper 100S and Application Suite Demo at ECOC 2010

Finisar Australia, oh so nice!

As you may have read recently, Finisar is now the number 1 WSS/ROADM supplier globally, with a particular strength in high-performance WSS for 50GHz channel spacing. As I discussed in my last post the flexibility of our core LCoS technology means that we’re extremely well positioned to meet the needs of upcoming flex-grid architectures for 100G and above transmission. Our WaveShaper product range is also expanding – again driven strongly by the growth in advanced modulation formats and coherent systems but also by expansion into other markets including microwave photonics and laser pulse manipulation.

To support all this growth, we’re expanding our engineering and R&D teams here in Sydney and are looking to hire a whole lot more engineers and scientists. We’re looking for people with a range of skills, including opto-mechanical engineers, software engineers, optical designers and high-speed electronics whizzes as well as manufacturing and process engineers to support the manufacturing ramp that comes with a growing market share in a rapidly-expanding market.

Sydney is a tremendously cosmopolitan city (heck, we’ve even got Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson curating a city-wide arts festival this month) with a great, year-round lifestyle and (particularly important for me these days) great food and wine…

Our facility is located in Waterloo, only 10 minutes to the heart of the city, with thriving local arts and restaurant scene and good access by road and public transport. We provide competitive salaries and full relocation packages. If you’re interested, check out this page or contact theodora.liosatis@finisar.com.

WaveShaper Coming to CLEO

Come one, come all! For those of you planning to attend CLEO/IQEC next week at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center, we invite you to visit Finisar booth #1218. From May 18-20, our illustrious technical team, including our staff from down under, will be on-hand to demonstrate the WaveShaper family of Programmable Optical Processors. Based on high-resolution Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCoS) technology, the WaveShaper processors provide extremely fine control of filter amplitude and phase characteristics, making them ideal for a range of pulse-shaping and optical signal processing applications.

For more information about WaveShaper, visit our website. Or send an e-mail anytime to waveshaper@finisar.com.

See you at the show!

Video: WaveShaper M-Series Demonstration at OFC 2010

OFC – One More Time

Well, OFC now seems a distant memory and the pleasures and fleshpots of the San Diego nightlife are unlikely to be reprised until 2015 at the earliest. However, a couple of key take-aways stand out for me now that the dust has settled.

The first is how quickly silicon is becoming a key part of optical communications. I’m not talking here about silicon photonics, which has been around for a long time now without making any real impact on real systems, but rather about the developments in digital signal processing technology of the type pioneered by Nortel. This is not the place to go into all the developments in this technology, but a particularly interesting data point for me was that at the rump session put on to discuss this issue, the ‘do everything in silicon’ guys nearly had it over the ‘optics is still the way of the future’ guys – and this despite it being primarily an optics-focused (pardon the pun) conference.

The second take-away from the haze of workshops, technical presentations and customer meetings was that the next generation of DWDM network architectures will move away from the strict adherence to the current ITU grid and be based on some form of variable channel bandwidth to maximize the data carrying capacity of the fibre. An example of this was the “SLICE” network architecture from NTT which demonstrated a network capable of adjusting the transmission channel bandwidth in 12.5 GHz steps to accommodate varying channel bit rates and to overcome different levels of impairments in the system.

To put this into perspective, it is worth remembering that when the ITU grid was first proposed in the mid ‘90s, the concept of a high-bit-rate dense WDM channel was something carrying 2.5 Gbit/sec in a 200 GHz channel. Since then the channel spacing has dropped, initially to 100 GHz and now to 50 GHz. Simultaneously, the channel data rates have ramped up to the currently-deployed 40G and future extensions to 100G and beyond. The introduction of coherent techniques such as DP-QPSK means that we can, reasonably comfortably, stuff 100 Gbit/sec down a 50 GHz channel but beyond this point will need to start ‘opening-up’ the channel bandwidth again to accommodate the 400 Gbit/sec or 1 Tbit/sec signals of the future.

To achieve this level of flexibility requires re-thinking a number of the elements in an optical comms system, but most critical to this will be the design of the ROADMS and Wavelength Selective Switches which now sit at the core of most networks. Finisar’s LCoS switching technology provides the flexibility needed for these variable-bandwidth architectures and in future columns I’ll discuss more about how this works and how the unique capabilities of LCoS will support future non-ITU-grid architectures.

At this point, I’d like to put in an unashamed plug for our WaveShaper technology. The plethora of activity in new modulation and transmission formats using non-standard channel spacing and non-ITU-Grid wavelengths means that there’s a need for an easily programmable filter which can simulate the (currently) non-standard components required for tomorrows networks. The WaveShaper family of Programmable Optical Processors are based on Finisar’s LCoS optical engine are an ideal tool for such studies as they allow extremely precise control of an optical filter shape, bandwidth and phase. Indeed, WaveShapers were used in many of the OFC post-deadline ‘hero’ experiments - in particular papers pdpb8, pdpc1, pdpc2, pdpc4 and pdpd2. More information on Finisar’s WaveShaper range can be found here.

Finally – Finisar Australia is hiring! As Infonetics recently announced Finisar is now number one in the WSS space. To support this growth and to help us develop the next generations of WSS products which will cement our position as the number one WSS supplier, we are looking for engineers and scientists in a range of disciplines to join our team in Sydney. With year-round great weather and a superb mix of beach and big-city lifestyle, combined with the opportunity to work on cutting-edge technology this is an opportunity not to be missed! Check out our current job postings.