Infinera, manufacturer of photonic integrated circuits (PICs), has achieved a record speed of 1 Terabit/s on a single photonic integrated chip.
The indium phosphide chip PIC would help increase the flexibility and reliability of optical networks and enable the use of devices that are small, cost-efficient and consume less energy. Optical equipment based on transponder-based system architectures is expensive, inflexible and takes time to upgrade.
Infinera’s 1 Terabit/s PIC is the main part of a new 10-channel receiver, where each channel has a 100 Gbit/s data rate capacity. The smaller-than-a-fingernail sized chip contains over 150 optical components, including frequency tunable local oscillator (LO) lasers, variable optical attenuators for control of LO power, LO and incoming signal mixing devices, 40 balanced photodetector pairs and a spectral demultiplexer.
The company will present the 1 Tbps indium phosphide PIC chip at the Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition/National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference. The event will take place at the Los Angeles Convention Center from 6 to 10 March 2011.
Source: http://www.infinera.com/