Tunable Lasers, ITU DWDM Grid, C Band, Emcore TTX1994 ITLA, Integrable Tunable Laser Assembly

EMCORE’s Tunable Extended Cavity Laser Technology EMCORE’s proprietary Tunable ECL (Extended Cavity Laser) technology delivers superior optical performance. EMCORE ECL products consistently provide industry-leading output power, Side Mode suppression Ratio (SMSR), narrow linewidth, low optical noise, and high-frequency accuracy important for advanced systems design.

Product Overview

The TTX1994 ITLA integrates the EMCORE tunable laser which consists of a cooled external cavity diode laser with electronics. The tunable laser uses thermally-tuned etalon filters to achieve single-mode operation at selectable wavelengths. The EMCORE tunable laser has no moving parts and shares many design elements of standard Distributed Feedback Lasers (DFB).

The TTX1994 ITLA has a narrow linewidth, low Relative Intensity Noise (RIN), a high >50 dB Side-Mode Suppression Ration (SMSR), low <3.5 W power consumption and excellent frequency accuracy. Features available on this product include Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS) Suppression, TxTrace, off-grid tuning, and ‘in-operation’ adjustable transmit power and frequency.

The TTX1994 ITLA allows full control and monitoring (as defined in the OIF-ITLA-MSA_ through an LVTTL RS-232 serial interface). For health monitoring, fault detection, and intervention designs, the TTX1994 fully implements monitors and alarms typically found on 300-pin transponders (for wavelength, temperature, power and bias).

Note: Figure 2 shows a block Diagram of the TTX1994 ITLA

Performance Overview

In today’s market, Tunable Lasers are common components in DWDM systems, helping to significantly reduce inventory and sparing costs on multichannel DWDM systems. Thanks to the Multi-Source Agreement (MSA) within the OIF, Integrable Tunable Laser Assemblies (ITLA) are available from many vendors with a defined form-factor and electrical interface. As a result, ITLA’s are mostly interchangeable for generic 10Gbps systems.

However, not all technologies are created equal. EMCORE’s proprietary ECL technology differentiates itself from semiconductor based alternatives and DFB arrays through its significantly better performance. Especially for higher data rate applications this distinction is important, as it enables and simplifies the design of 40Gbps and 100 Gbps high data rate systems.