Optoplex Corporation today announced that it has successfully expanded the interleaver product lines by adding new variations and features to its product portfolio which already consists of products with channel spacing ranging from 400 to 12.5 GHz. Optoplex’s interleaver product family has been fully qualified per Telcordia GR-1221 and GR-63 Standards.

The new products announced include super-band interleaver, sub-band (colorless) demux and tunable interleaver.

Super-band Interleaver
A new generation of design capable of producing both ultra-wide passband and ultra-wide stopband with a step-function like transition between the bands. This new design has the following applications.

1. The device can be used to interleave banded channels. By using this Super-band interleaver, one can achieve 4-skip-0 banded demultiplexing architecture without using expansive bandpass filters while improving performance and lower overall system cost and complexity. (E.g.: A typical 32-channel TFF-based demux’s insertion loss would be improved from 6.5 dB to 5.5 dB and insertion loss uniformity improved from 4.5 dB to 2.5 dB without any cost increase).

2. Particularly suitable for narrower channel (25 or 12.5 GHz) application. Since for such narrow channel spacing, passband and stopband have to be at least 60% of FSR in order to have sufficient signal bandwidth and channel isolation. It is not possible for any of the current interleaver technologies to achieve such performances.

3. The sharp transition edge can be utilized as a Skip-0 edge filter. Today’s best edge filter has at least 3-nm transition range which is equivalent to four 100-GHz or eight 50-GHz channels. This prohibits the use of edge filters in mux/demux devices without sacrificing communication channels.

Sub-band (colorless) Demux
Sub-band (colorless) demux can separate (demultiplexing) ANY 4 or 8 contiguous channels without active tuning and is particularly useful in conjunction with Optoplex’s banded tunable filter or OADM (see news dated Nov. 7, 2002).

Tunable Interleaver
A tunable interleaver has movable passbands and stopbands while its free spectral range (FSR) and spectral shape are maintained constant. Tuning is achieved without any internal moving parts and by a simple user- friendly electronics interface.

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