Optoplex Corporation, a leading supplier of innovative fiber-optic components for the next-generation communication systems, today announces its new-generation high-tuning-speed DQPSK demodulator for 40Gb/s applications.

The ever-increasing demand for more bandwidth to home, office, and mobile devices, especially the video-on-demand (VoD), has propelled the deployment of high-speed optical communications systems, and within a short two-year period 40G phase-modulation technologies has evolved from the research environment to become a commercial reality.

Differential quadrature phase shift keying (DQPSK) is a competing modulation format for next-generation 40G optical transport systems. Having excellent tolerance against chromatic dispersion and PMD, 40G DQPSK is spectrally more efficient and can be deployed side-by-side with the current 10G linecards in standard 50-GHz channel spacing, which is a big benefit for network operators. It also brings saving to Capex by utilizing lower-speed (20G) electronics.

Having led the development and commercialization of DPSK demodulator, contributing to the first wave of successful deployment of 40G systems by network operators around the world, Optoplex has once again responded to the new calling of the market by pioneering in the free-space optics based DQPSK demodulator capable of ultra-fast phase tuning with response time in the sub-millisecond range. The need for such a fast tuning speed is due to the dynamic nature and increasing complexity of today’s reconfigurable network; i.e., whenever a different wavelength channel is switched to in the incoming signal, the DQPSK demodulator and other components in the network, such as tunable dispersion compensator, need to be tuned to the new channel by back-and-forth iterations.

Comparing to the competing component technologies, Optoplex’s DQPSK demodulator has lower insertion loss and polarization-dependent frequency shift (PDFS) while requiring less power consumption. With a track record of having shipped >15,000 DPSK demodulators built on the same platform, the free-space based DQPSK demodulator will become a more reliable and cost-effective solution to the system providers. Full Telcordia qualification of this device is underway and field trials by a few major equipment providers are expected in the second quarter of 2010.

During this week’s Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition (OFC) in San Diego, CA, Optoplex (at Booth# 3130) welcomes optical transport systems and subsystems providers to visit and discuss their needs in making their choices of 40-Gb/s components.

For more information, please write to sales@optoplex.com or call (510) 490-8320.