OREANDA-NEWS.  March 15, 2011. Furukawa Electric Co., Ltd., and the U.S. based OFS, Specialty Photonics Division today announced a Raman amplifier (HPU42000 Series) with a built-in automatic gain control (AGC) function. The Raman amplifier offers ease of system implementation and superior noise characteristics, which in combination with erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) improves optical signal to noise ratio (OSNR) as well as compensates for optical loss resulting from optical transmission lines and optical components. With the built-in AGC function, the output power per channel at each amplifier is kept constant by controlling the gain automatically, thus resulting in simplicity as well as better integration in transmission systems.

Background

Furukawa is a global industry leader for 1480-nm pumping lasers, a key device of fiber-optic amplifiers. The company has registered several patents on Raman amplifiers in Japan and the U.S. Furukawa continues to innovate to bring cutting edge, high-quality products to market as an industry leader.

As ultra-high bit rate optical transmission of as high as 100 Gbps is progressively implemented in the future, the demand for Raman amplifiers with superior noise characteristics is expected to increase significantly, since Raman amplifiers in combination with erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) can effectively improve OSNR, thus allowing longer reach and/or higher capacity optical networks. To fulfill market needs, Furukawa developed the Raman amplifier (HPU42000 Series) with a built-in AGC function. The product is presently available on a commercial sample basis with production planned for 3rd Quarter.

2011. Furukawa had also earlier commercialized the Raman EDFA, a single unit Raman amplifier and EDFA (ErFA40000 Series), in March 2010.
OFS and Furukawa will be featuring this device at OFC/NFOEC, Booth #2091 March 8th -10th.