GigOptix White Paper Details Modulator’s Success
According to a new white paper available from electro-optic components supplier GigOptix Inc., the company’s LX8401 40Gb/s Thin Film Polymer on Silicon (TFPS) MZ modulator “has shown exceptional Spurious Free Dynamic Range (SFDR) and Third Order Inter-modulation (IM3) performance of up to 108 dB SFDR as measured by Linear Photonics LLC.”
The white paper details performance results GigOptix says are “superior to those of commercially available Lithium Niobate modulators,” in part noting “coupled with the TFPS technology’s low drive voltages and broad bandwidths, we believe that GigOptix’s TFPS modulators now offer the industry a clear path to next generation optical communication systems, such as Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM)-based modulation schemes.”
The white paper also says linearity is a key enabler of such next-generation, high-performance optical-transmission systems as 400Gb/s and 1Tb/s optical telecommunications systems. “These systems will likely be based on QAM schemes as optical communication systems mimic RF communications’ evolutionary path in increasing data rates through the use of multi-bit symbol encoding schemes,” the company adds. “These advanced modulation techniques require excellent linear performance from the modulator to enable high fidelity replication of multi-level electrical signals into the optical domain with minimum distortion and desensitizing effects.”
“The GigOptix LX8401 optical modulator performed exceedingly well in our linearity measurements,” comments John MacDonald, vice president/general manager at Linear Photonics. “Linear Photonics has a long history in developing and manufacturing high-frequency, analog, fiber-optic equipment, and we have stringent requirements on device linearity performance. We are very excited about using GigOptix’s devices in our next-generation high-performance solutions.”
(Editor’s note: for more information on this white paper, contact Parker Martineau at 650/424-1937.)
