Athermal AWG Module

In the construction of large-capacity main transmission network, DWDM (Light Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing System) has become the main body of long-distance trunk transmission network due to its advantages of large capacity, support for multiple services, and good scalability. Part of the rack plan in the DWDM system construction is no power supply(such as WDM-PON, etc.). AWG (Athermal Arrayed Waveguide Grating) is a new type of pure passive device that is designed to match this requirement.

Development of DWDM technology at home and abroad mainly have three kinds, respectively based on array Waveguide Grating (AWG – Arrayed Waveguide Grating) and medium membrane filter (TFF) and fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) technology.AWG is a planar waveguide device. The AWG is a planar waveguide device and is an arrayed waveguide grating fabricated on a chip substrate by using PLC technology.Compared with FBG and TTF, AWG has the advantages of high integration, large number of channels, low insertion loss, and easy mass production.

The AWG uses a temperature-controlled circuit and a heater to keep the AWG chip in a constant temperature environment of about 70 °C, which keeps the wavelength of each channel of the AWG stable. The major advantages of an athermal AWG are that there is no need for power supply or temperature monitoring of the AWG device. As a pure passive product, it can use self-compensation technology to do self-adaptation control for external temperature. Its center wavelength is insensitive to the change of ambient temperature. It can be widely used in the metropolitan area and long-distance DWDM optical fiber communication system.

HYC’s athermal AWG module is based on arrayed waveguide grating technology, which does not require power and temperature generation equipment; it belongs to pure passive module. With low insertion loss ，PDL, and low crosstalk, it has good stability in the operating temperature range of -40°C to 85°C.  HYC provides a series of AAWG DWDM MUX/DEMUX with 32, 40 and 48 channels optional, available in standalone 19-inch rack mount and small metal box. What’s more, these modules can also have power monitoring terminal port and other band expansion port. All the product is Telcordia GR-1209 & GR-1221 qualified, and RoHS compliant.

With the rapid development of 5G, users will have higher and higher bandwidth requirements. To meet the need of communication capacity, the bit rate of optical fiber communication is improving all the time. The active WDM-PON solution is difficult to be deployed on a large scale due to high cost; and the passive WDM-PON has more application space because of its low cost, no power supply, and easy installation. The athermal AWG will be more widely used with a larger number of channels, denser channel spacing, and no need to rely on power supply or temperature control.

Article from HYC Blog.