EXFO unveils fastest optical sampling oscilloscopes

EXFO Electro-Optical Engineering Inc. (www.exfo.com) has released the fastest optical sampling oscilloscopes in the industry for current and future 40G and 100G optical networks.

Offered in the market under the EXPO banner, these state-of-the-art test solutions can characterize optical networks with maximum transmission rates of 640 Gbit/s. These optical sampling oscilloscopes are compatible with the company’s growing 40G product providing customers an extensive, multilayer test solution for their next-generation networks.

A single-channel oscilloscope, the PSO-101 enables pattern visualization and eye-diagram analysis within current high-speed optical networks. The design’s quality has been acknowledged by R&D Magazine, since it was chosen as one of the top 100 R&D products for 2008.

Meanwhile, the PSO-102 is a quad- or dual-channel variant of the previous model, and is specifically designed for next-generation networks that feature advanced modulation schemes, allowing network equipment manufacturers (NEMs) to achieve ultra-high network speeds like 40G and 100G utilizing current dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) channel spacing, and keeping resilience to polarization and chromatic dispersion phenomena.

The PSO-100 oscilloscopes also offer new software options and features for compliance testing of optical transceivers, such as data filtering and mask hit analysis. It is also the only bit rate-independent test solution available in the market that can measure amplitude- and phase-modulated signals with 500 GHz bandwidth, and achieve a sub-picosecond temporal resolution.

“High-speed, next-generation networks involve higher transmission rates, advanced modulation schemes and multiple tests that pose serious quality-of-service issues for customers,” said Etienne Gagnon, Vice-President of Product Development and Marketing at EXFO.

“EXFO now provides the only solution on the market that can handle all of these challenges with a single, dedicated test instrument.”