Leading firms announce enhancements to MSA standard for Athermal arrayed waveguide grating modules

TOKYO, JAPAN & SAN JOSE, USA: NEL, Hitachi Cable, Gemfire, Furukawa Electric, JDSU and NeoPhotonics, leading companies in the planar lightwave circuit (PLC) passive components industry, today announced an enhanced Multi-Source Agreement (MSA) that provides a standardized form factor for Arrayed Waveguide Grating (AWG) Modules with an athermal configuration.

Athermal AWGs provide multiplexing and demultiplexing for DWDM optical equipment through a common interface. The athermal design compensates for temperature passively and requires no electrical power, reducing overall system power requirements.

The MSA enables equipment manufacturers to choose from multiple suppliers for the standardized product, helping to reduce lead times and cost. Version 3.0 of the MSA has been published and contains descriptions of the standard, small form factor and athermal AWG packages.

“The athermal AWG MSA helps solutions providers like JDSU supply cost effective products to network equipment manufacturers,” said Ben Hua, Product Line Manager in the CCOP business segment at JDSU. “It will also help system designers save on electrical power and extend the athermal AWG application into new areas where there is no electrical power.”

“With power consumption becoming an ever more critical parameter in advanced telecom systems, NEL expects that the new athermal AWG MSA will lead to more rapid adoption of this power saving green technology,” said Yoshio Itaya, Executive Managing Director of Photonics Business Group of NEL.

“Athermal AWGs are attractive and cost effective due to the elimination of the power supply control. Hitachi Cable expects the newly created MSA standard will accelerate the worldwide deployment of DWDM based optical network systems,” said Tomohisa Henmi, General Manager of Optical Transmission Components and Equipment Dept. of Hitachi Cable.

“Eliminating the requirement for electrical power is particularly important in access networks, where the AWG must be located outside plant Gemfire believes that applications such as WDM-PON will be accelerated through the availability of MSA standard parts,” said Nigel Cockroft, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Gemfire.

“Athermal AWGs are now commonly used in Reconfigurable Add Drop Multiplexer (ROADM) nodes to provide multiplexing and demultiplexing of local traffic. The availability of an MSA standard will make it simpler for equipment companies to accommodate multiple vendors,” said Toshihiko Ota, Manager of Telecommunications Company of Furukawa Electric.

“The current MSA for thermally stabilized AWGs has been very successful in providing customers with certainty of footprint and supply and NeoPhotonics expects the new athermal AWG MSA to bring these benefits to the emerging market for athermal devices,” said Ferris Lipscomb, Vice President of Marketing of NeoPhotonics.