Feature: Northlight banks on active components
The Järfälla, Sweden-based manufacturer, which specializes in 2.5 and 10 Gbit/s optical transmitters, receivers and amplifiers, claims to have significant orders with more than 10 companies so far this year, including four tier-one vendors. "And we have shipped production units, not just samples," said Robert Green, Northlight s chief operating officer.
Green says that having its roots in Ericsson helped Northlight overcome the crucial first hurdle in any sales negotiation - just getting through the customer s front door. Northlight s 10 Gbit/s RF capability, part of the Ericsson heritage, also helped win business.
"Most of our revenue this year has come from 2.5 Gbit/s applications, but our development work is 10 Gbit/s oriented," Green explained. "Making the optical semiconductor is one science, but the strength of a 10 Gbit/s receiver is down to RF design. You have to design the packages carefully to deal with crosstalk and noise, much more than you have to at 2.5 Gbit/s."
At the recent ECOC show, Northlight released an array of new products, including TOSA and ROSA transmitter/receiver optical subassemblies for incorporation into longer range transceivers. "We ve seen a gap in the market for subassemblies that can handle long distances," Green explained. "A number of companies supply short-distance transceivers based on distributed-feedback lasers. But we focus on 40 and 80 km, and that s where you need electroabsorption modulated lasers [EMLs]."
Green reckons that Northlight makes "the best EML on the planet". The company s 10 Gbit/s EML, for example, offers an output power of at least 0 dBm at 1550 nm, 12 GHz typical small signal bandwidth, a maximum dispersion penalty of 2 dB at 1600 ps/nm, and excellent wavelength stability and chirp characteristics.
The TOSA packs the EML chip and a cooler into a 17.86 x 5.8 x 5.3 mm connectorized unit. The small size of the device means that it can be incorporated into an XFP transceiver (XFP is a multisource agreement for 10 Gbit/s transceivers that occupy one-fifth of the space and use one-half of the power of current devices), as well as the larger XPAK and small-form-factor packages.
Northlight targets its products at markets including metro dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM), 10 Gigabit Ethernet, cable TV and traditional SDH/SONET. "I would say that SDH/SONET is the most important, we re finding more opportunities there than in WDM right now," said Green.
He continued: "SDH/SONET applications tend to use large parts like the butterfly devices that go inside a 300-pin transponder, but the pressure is on to reduce the size, cost and power consumption. We believe that there will be a rapid move toward transceiver platforms, and a number of Tier-1 vendors in SDH/SONET are focusing on XFP as a solution."
The TOSA is also suitable for use in a range of 10 Gigabit Ethernet applications. It offers an optical output power of more than 0 dBm, a dispersion penalty of less than 2 dB at 800 ps/nm, and supports 100 GHz DWDM applications without using a wavelength locker. The receiver end (the ROSA) contains a pin receiver and can be used at distances of up to 40 km. Northlight is also developing an avalanche-photodiode (APD)-based version for 80 km that is slated for release early next year.
ECOC also saw Northlight release several other products, including: an EML-based, 0 dBm, transmitter module for 2.5 Gbit/s links of more than 600 km; a surface-mount, 17-pin receiver module; and an erbium-doped fiber amplifier with a variable gain range of 15 dB, an output power of 17 dBm and ultrafast transient suppression.
Green says that the firm s customer base now includes systems and subsystems makers, as well as a few component vendors deciding whether to make or buy. "Northlight is for real - we ve got real customers buying real products based on an established manufacturing capability," he added.
* This article originally appeared in FibreSystems September 2003 p34.
