High-power tunable laser speeds fiber, probe alignment

Keysight Technologies, Inc. has introduced the 81602A, an extra high power tunable laser. The 81602A eases tolerance for power budgets in test setups and speeds fiber or probe alignment by getting first light faster. Keysight also introduced new wavelengths for its recently released 8160xA family of tunable laser modules for the 8164B lightwave measurement system.

The new 81602A extra high power tunable laser reaches an optical power level of over +17 dBm (50 mW). The high output power helps compensate for the coupling loss of optical surface probes or the insertion loss of external modulators during the verification of integrated photonic designs. This allows testing photonic devices at relevant signal levels and wavelengths. With a tuning range of 1250 nm to 1370 nm, the laser addresses the latest silicon photonics research.

With the new 8160xA models, manufacturers of LR4 and CWDM receiver optical subassemblies (ROSA) and of optical demultiplexers can improve their test throughput.

81606A and 81608A tunable laser modules with the new option 113 cover the wavelength range from 1240 nm to 1380 nm, and offer a peak output power above +13 dBm with low spontaneous emission. This allows customers to measure spectral response and sensitivity of 100-Gigabit-Ethernet ROSAs well above noise levels, and to verify the isolation of multiplexers/demultiplexers at high measurement dynamic range.

The new option 113 is available for the 81606A, the family’s top line model with a spontaneous emission level 80 dB/nm below the signal, outstanding tuning accuracy and sub-picometer repeatability even at 200-nm/s two-way sweeps. Option 113 is also available for the 81608A value line tunable laser which features ±1.5-pm wavelength repeatability at bidirectional sweeps up to 200 nm/s and offers a spontaneous emission level 75 dB/nm below the signal, as well as for the 81609A basic line, step-tunable laser.

All members of the new tunable laser family are compatible with the current 81600B tunable laser source family programming commands and the N7700A photonic application suite, a solution software for making fast and accurate optical measurements, controlling fiber optic instruments and analyzing measurement results. This makes it easy for engineers to transition smoothly to the new modules or expand their collections to include the new models.

Keysight
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