September 21, 2006
The Furukawa Electric Co., Ltd. (President: Hiroshi Ishihara) announced on Sep.21, 2006 a strategic partnership with Capella Photonics Inc.(*1) (President: Larry Schwerin: Headquaters: San Jose, California, U.S.) to manufacture and market wavelength selective switches (WSSs *2) based on Capella’s patented design and technologies.
Under the partnership, Furukawa Electric will ‘independently’ manufacture the WSSs at own facilities and provide the product on the FITEL brand to the market.
Capella will continue to manufacture the product at Fabrinet’s facility in Thailand and provide on Capella’s WavePath brand.
The WSSs is expected to grow in demand as an essential component for constructing optical networks of the next generation that are installed at a connection node for interconnection between networks, making themselves an indispensable product for constructing optical networks of the next generation where configuration upgrading is going on from ring to mesh. Even when communications traffic increases due to the use of IP to provide audio and video distribution service, the WSS shows outstanding performance in terms of network maintenance and operation, enabling sighnificant suppression of capital investment also.
Furukawa Electric will thus expand its existing product lineup of key components for the next-generation optical networks including optical fiber amplifiers, dispersion compensation modules, PLC products such as A-thermal AWG(*3), arrayed optical switch-VOA(*4) and wavelength tunable lasers, thereby responding to the evolving requirements of the market.
Moreover, both the companies are thinking about jointly the possibility of developing new products of strong competitiveness, taking advantage of the experience and technology of Furukawa Electric in the optical communication market combined with the WSS technology of Capella, ultimately aiming at supplying optical communication components and subsystems in response to the requirements of the market toward construction of the next-generation networks.
Figure 1 Typical configuration of communication network
Remarks
(*1) Outline of Capella Photonics Inc.
Headquarters: San Jose, California, U.S.
President and CEO: Larry Schwerin
Established: 2000
Description of business: a development venture company for wavelength selective switches, holding significant patents for this technology.
(*2) Wavelength selective switch
Wavelength selective switches (WSSs) are installed at a connection node for interconnection between networks, making themselves an indispensable device for constructing optical networks of the next generation where configuration upgrading is going on from ring to mesh.
This device is provided with the functions of separating the optical signals input from an optical fiber according to their wavelengths, and independently switching their optical paths, as well as controlling the optical signal intensities.
Even when communications traffic increases due to the use of IP to provide audio and video distribution service, the WSS shows outstanding performance in terms of network maintenance and operation, enabling significant suppression of capital investment also.
Figure 2 Schematic of wavelength selective switch
(*3) Athermal AWG (athermal arrayed waveguide grating)
An AWG is used to combine together the light signals having different wavelengths input from an optical fiber, or vice versa, i.e., to separate a combined light signal into light signals of different wavelengths. When athermalization without using electric power is applied to AWG to make them insensitive to temperature changes, they can be used without any power supply or temperature monitoring.
(*4) Arrayed optical switch-variable optical attenuator
This device is provided with the functions of a variable optical attenuator to tune the optical levels of each wavelength independently, and an optical switch to transfer the optical paths. The array configuration on a single substrate enables manipulation of optical signals from plurality of optical fibers.