Increasing demand for network services is driving the introduction of new transmission formats and channel management technologies that facilitate the efficient use of optical bandwidth for extremely high data rates.

While the introduction of coherent techniques such as Dual-Polarization Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (DP-QPSK) enables 100Gb/s transmission within a 50GHz channel, traffic with higher data rates, including 400Gb/s and 1Tbit/s signals of the future, are not expected to fit inside 50GHz wide channels, requiring channel spacing to increase to enable the use of new transmission formats.

Finisar's Flexgrid™ technology provides dynamic control of the channel center frequency with 6.25GHz resolution of channel width with 12.5GHz resolution within a Wavelenth Selective Switch (WSS), the key element in a Reconfigurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexer (ROADM).

Once deployed, channel plans are configurable 'on-the-fly', meaning that channel bandwidths can be adjusted to most efficiently carry future demands as it arises.

Futhermore, as frequency slot edges are aligned to the 12.5GHz ITU grid, Flexgrid™ offers full backwards compatibility with both the standard 100GHz and 50GHz ITU grids, as illustrated in the figure below.

Flexgrid™ is available now on the DWPf 1x9 and 1x20 WSS Dynamic Wavelength Processor (DWP100 and DWP50) products and will be available soon on the Edge Wavelength Processor (EWP) WSS product lines.

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