WAVESPLITTER TECHNOLOGIES’ WAVEPUMP IS FIRST All-FIBER PUMP COMBINER TO PASS STRINGENT BELLCORE ENVIRONMENTAL TESTS

Low-insertion-loss, all-fiber design enables increased optical amplifier performance and reliability for long-haul optical network

OFC, BALTIMORE, MD, March 06, 2000 – WaveSplitter™ Technologies, Inc. today announced that its all-fiber WavePump™ pump laser combiner is the first such device to pass the most stringent of Bellcore’s™ GR-1221 environmental tests for fiber-optic network components. In addition to meeting mechanical and thermal shock, vibration, temperature-cycling and other requirements, the four-channel WavePump has been demonstrated to comply with Bellcore’s extremely demanding “high temperature storage/damp heat” specification: achieving provisional qualification by passing 1000 hours of operation with less than 0.1 dB change in target insertion loss at 85°C and 85 percent humidity.

Aimed at the burgeoning all-optical long-haul telecommunications arena, WaveSplitter’s WavePump combines all the advantages of its very-low-insertion-loss, all-fiber design with the reliability required in a pump laser combiner for optical amplifiers. Advantages include unmatched power-handling and multichannel pump capabilities for supporting higher network channel counts and wavelength independence for greater amplifier-design flexibility. Equally significant, WavePump delivers these benefits at lower cost than competitive pump-combiner technologies.

Hence, amplifier designers and their long-haul-carrier customers now have the means to significantly increase both the signal transmission distance and the capacity of all-optical telecommunications networks -- flexibly, economically, and above all reliably, according to Sheau Chen, Ph.D., President and CEO of WaveSplitter.

“We’ve always been aware that for long-haul telecommunications companies and their system integrators, reliability is the overriding criterion for amplifier components and other all-optical network elements,” Chen said. “That’s why WaveSplitter, from its inception, has devoted substantial company time, effort, and dollars to designing the fiber-optic industry’s highest levels of reliability into our all-fiber products. And that’s on top of making sure we’ve got both the manufacturing capacity and the ISO 9001-certified processes in place to support volume production.”

“Now that the WavePump has scored a major industry first by passing Bellcore GR-1221, WaveSplitter expects these efforts to pay off in a big way. Our recent major customer wins, with additional wins soon to be announced, attest to the success of our products and our devotion to achieving the highest reliability levels,” Chen continued. “Finally, amplifier manufacturers and other optical system suppliers can look to a proven, high-quality source to meet their exacting component requirements.”

Better amplifier performance, more amplifier choices
As a component of optical amplifier systems, pump laser combiners provide a cost-effective way to increase amplifier power to meet the bandwidth explosion in long-haul optical networks. By combining the output of multiple pump laser diodes, pump combiners help deliver the needed signal amplification as network traffic, size, and complexity mount. At the same time, they eliminate the requirement for carriers to invest in new, high-powered laser technology that is expensive, unproven, and less reliable than current-generation laser diodes.

Because the WavePump’s all-fiber design generates extremely low insertion loss, it more efficiently conserves pump power in erbium-doped filter amplifiers (EDFAs) and other types of optical amplifiers, resulting in better amplifier performance. Its all-fiber design also gives the WavePump a power-handling capability of more than 2 watts – many times that of pump combiners based on dielectric filters, for example.

Such high power handling means the WavePump can combine the output of many laser diodes, versus only two for other types of pump combiners. This multichannel capability also significantly enhances amplifier reliability. Hence a WavePump-equipped amplifier can support more signal channels and transmit more wavelengths without sacrificing transmission quality, and so help long-haul carriers keep pace with network bandwidth requirements.

The WavePump also opens up more amplifier and channel choices for adding optical capacity. Because WaveSplitter’s pump combiner supports a wide variety of wavelengths and channel spacings that can be easily customized, network carriers are no longer restricted to using EDFAs that transmit optical signals only in the standard erbium-gain region of 1535 to 1560 nm. They can opt for new Raman amplifiers, which provide highly uniform signal amplification and so eliminate the need for costly gain-equalization steps. The high-power handling capability of the WavePump is ideally suited for the new Raman amplifiers, due to the high pump powers required for these amplifiers.

Availability
WaveSplitter’s WavePump is available now in production quantities.

About WaveSplitter Technologies, Inc.

WaveSplitter Technologies, Inc. develops, manufactures and markets reliable, highly scalable, cost-effective components for optical amplifier and DWDM systems for both long-haul and metropolitan area network applications. WaveSplitter's high-performance fiber and planar lightwave circuit components increase network bandwidth capabilities and offer a unique combination of low signal loss and modular expandability at an economical value. WaveSplitter was founded in 1996 and is headquartered in Fremont, California. WaveSplitter is a trademark of WaveSplitter Technologies, Inc. All other trademarks are the properties of their respective owners.

For more information, reporters can contact:

Lisa Blair
WaveSplitter Technologies, Inc.
Phone: 510-651-7800 x 243
Fax: 510-580-1395
E-mail: lisa_blair@wavesplitter.com