Mitsubishi Electric Corporation announced that it will begin shipping samples of its new tunable laser-diode chip for use in optical transceivers of optical-fiber communication systems on October 1.
The new chip is expected to help increase the capacity of digital coherent communication as well as reduce the size of optical transceivers.
improving communication efficiency
Data communication volume is rapidly increasing due to the spread of 5G mobile communication networks and the popularization of video-streaming services. In response, the capacity of high-speed communication needs to be increased from 100Gbps at present to 400Gbps in optical-fiber networks for communication between data centers as well as long-distance communication.
Therefore, digital coherent communication systems are being deployed to improve communication efficiency in optical-fiber networks. At the same time, however, optical transceivers must be further downsized to accommodate space limitations in network equipment, but until now tunable laser diodes have been built into packages, making downsizing difficult.
Chip features
The new chip outputs a 1.55μm light wavelength that is used for digital coherent communication. It supports a wide range of wavelengths in compliance with the 400Gbps optical-transceiver standard (OIF-400ZR-01.0). Offering the product in the form of a chip will allow manufacturers the flexibility to optimize package designs for specific optical transceivers.
The chip's highly reliable design incorporates semiconductor production technology Mitsubishi Electric developed for the production of distributed-feedback (DFB) laser in mobile base stations and electro-absorption modulator integrated laser diode (EML) in data centers.