Optoplex today announced the introduction of its newest product, the DPSK. The DPSK is designed to be the industry’s smallest, athermal differential phase-shift keying demodulator. The DPSK converts Phase modulation into Amplitude modulation over the entire C+L band without requiring unwieldy monitoring and temperature feedback controls to lock the frequency.

In comparison to the established on-off keying (OOK) modulation format, DPSK is emerging as the preferred modulation format for transmitting 40-Gb/s signals because DPSK exhibits less power penalties and therefore allows for farther transmission ranges.

The crux of the DPSK system is its demodulator. Prevailing DPSK demodulator technology is based on a Mach-Zehnder interferometer. The glaring drawback to the Mach-Zehnder interferometer is its fiber-based construction, making it inherently temperature sensitive and therefore requiring additional monitoring circuitry and feedback loops to maintain a proper operating temperature.

In contrast, Optoplex’s DPSK demodulator is based on a free-space optical design, allowing it to be compact, athermal and polarization-independent. The measured frequency drift of Optoplex’s device over temperature is only ~0.02 GHz/°C. Further, the DPSK exhibits a total polarization-dependent frequency shift of less than 0.3 GHz over the 0~70°C temperature range with an extinction ratio of greater than 30 dB. Each DPSK will cover all channels in the C+L band.

The DPSK measures only 25 mm x 25 mm x 10 mm because it does not require any sophisticated monitoring and feedback controls to lock a desired frequency. Having passed rigorous reliability testing based on Telcordia GR-1221 requirements, the DPSK is production-ready for mass implementation.

With the DPSK, Optoplex Corporation once again demonstrates its capacity to introduce revolutionary new components to solve today’s most challenging optical communication problems.

For more information, please write to info@optoplex.com or call (510) 490-9930.