Technical Insight
Agility showcases 10 mW tunable laser (Fiber News)
Agility Communications has developed a prototype monolithic 10 mW tunable laser. Discussing the device at this year s Optical Fiber Conference, chief development engineer Greg Fish described a packaged monolithic laser capable of rapidly tuning to more than 90 ITU channels. This is the first such widely-tunable monolithic laser to graduate from laboratory curiosity to sampling device. Agility s existing commercial product, a sample-grating DBR tunable laser, offers 4 mW of output power. Fabricated and alpha-tested at the company s manufacturing facility in Santa Barbara, California, Agility s device employs a monolithic architecture based on InP to integrate a DBR laser and electroabsorption modulator, which simplifies automation by reducing the number of chips to be connected and packaged. The device operates over the entire C-band (15301565 nm) and is the first prototype of its kind. "Under rigorous production testing in our manufacturing facilities, Agility can provide the data and results to substantiate the full capabilities of a monolithic 10 mW, widely-tunable laser," said president and CEO Ron Nelson. "Our first product supported the needs of the metro market, and with this new high-power capability Agility can now address the long-haul market. Because Agility can integrate components at the chip level, our all-monolithic architecture delivers high power, functionality, and can be manufactured at the lowest possible price."
