Pilot Photonics secures large european funding win to develop key technologies for CPO scaling
SAN DIEGO, March 25, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Pilot Photonics today announced that the company has secured €2.5M from the European Innovation Council (EIC) to develop
The Elusive Trifecta for the Perfect iTLA
Pilot Photonics has written an article for the December 2023 (Volume 29, Issue XII) edition of Compound Semiconductor. In it, we explain our integrated tunable laser assembly (iTLA) possessing wide tunability, fast switching and narrow linewidth: The Elusive Trifeca.
ECOC 2023 in Glasgow Opens Interest in Tunable Lasers
The European Conference on Optical Communication (ECOC) was held over 4 days at the SEC in Glasgow, Scotland in October 2023. Pilot Photonics was there to showcase our latest developments in optical comb and tunable laser technology. It was the 49th edition of the conference, which brings together over 6,700 visitors and 300 exhibitors to discuss their latest breakthroughs and offerings.
Visitors to our booth were particularly interested in our widely-tunable lasers in the O-band and C-band. These lasers span 35 nm and offer “step & sweep” tuning today, with a quasi-continuous tuning version coming soon. The lasers are suitable for applications in coherent optical communications in both telecoms and datacoms, fibre sensing, FMCW LiDAR and more.
Scaling coherent transceivers using integrated comb lasers
Coherent optical communication systems have traditionally met the challenge of sustained growth in traffic demand by increasing the data rate on single wavelength channels. However continually increasing baud rates has become prohibitively challenging and expensive while increasing the constellation size quickly limits the transmission reach. For these reasons, coherent channels based on multiple parallel wavelengths are emerging to facilitate continued bandwidth growth and to keep pace with ethernet optics. Today, dual-wavelength channels are implemented with individual lasers, however as channel counts increase using integrated comb lasers can offer additional benefits over individual lasers. Integrated comb lasers deliver multiple coherent wavelengths from a single chip or package. In high capacity core networks, since all of the wavelengths are frequency locked, intra channel guard bands can be minimized or eliminated allowing capacity to be maximised. And because the wavelengths are all phase related, the DSP can be simplified, and transmission impairments can be compensated. On the other hand, in edge aggregation networks where cost and power are more critical a single comb-based terminal located at the hub can distribute fractions of the line rate as individual optical carriers to slower receivers while remaining compatible with standard optical line systems (OLS) in terms of WDM grid and routing options. Reductions in cost, size, power and complexity offered by integrated comb lasers in comparison to multiple individual lasers also make them a compelling solution for this use case.
Pilot Photonics announces availability of world’s fastest switching low linewidth, widely tunable laser
San Francisco, Jan 31, 2023— Pilot Photonics today announced the availability of a new widely tunable laser module. It is the only commercially available tunable laser that offers the elusive combination of nanosecond switching and narrow linewidth solving a long running challenge in the industry.
Widely tunable semiconductor lasers can typically offer narrow linewidth, or fast tuning, but not both. In optical fiber sensing systems, electronically tunable lasers have traditionally been used for their fast tunability over a wide tuning range which is achieved using a current injection tuning mechanism. However, these lasers exhibit linewidths that are unsuitable for demanding phase sensitive applications such as coherent optical communication and frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) LiDAR. Changing to a thermal tuning mechanism reduces the linewidth, but at the expense of switching speed which renders the laser unsuitable for some of these applications.
Pilot Photonics’ laser is based on a monolithic InP chip fabricated on an active-passive platform. Electro-optic tuning with reverse-voltage bias of tuning sections allows mA-order dark currents and facilitates nanosecond switching speeds with low power dissipation. It offers more than 30nm of wavelength tuning range in either the C-band or the O-band, and linewidth of 150kHz. Currently available in 14-pin butterfly package or integrated into an OEM or laboratory instrument form-factor module, the company is also developing a nano-iTLA module for high volume applications.
“We have been working with our partner SMART Photonics on a couple of innovative tunable laser designs made possible with their PIC platform” said Dr. Frank Smyth, founder and CTO at Pilot Photonics. “These devices target specific challenges that our customers are facing, and we are delighted to help solve them”.
Pilot Photonics will be present at SPIE Photonics West 2023, January 31st – February 2nd 2023, San Francisco, USA (booth 4645) where it will demonstrate the tunable laser and present a paper entitled “Widely tunable C-band laser and module with nanosecond tuning and narrow linewidth” detailing its characterisation.
ECOC 2022: PILOT USES JePPIX SERVER FOR PHOTONICS TECH
Pilot Photonics demonstrated three new products at ECOC2022 which emanated from the JePPIX platform. These include a low linewidth fast tuneable laser, an InP-based monolithic single mode laser in the C-band; an integrated Comb Laser Assembly (iCLA) for scaling coherent transceiver capacity, and SuperTROSA™ a comb-based superchannel transmitter.