OFS Announces Commercial Availability of LaserWave® FLEX WideBand Multimode Fiber

Duplex transmission of 100Gb/s using SWDM technology and backwards compatible with OM4

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Sep 21, 2015, 06:00 ET

LAS VEGAS, Sept. 21, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- BICSI Fall Conference and Exhibition 2015, Booth 207 -- OFS, a leading-edge designer, manufacturer and supplier of innovative fiber optic network solutions and equipment, today announced the commercial availability of LaserWave® FLEX WideBand multimode fiber, designed to meet the demanding requirements for today's OM4 applications, as well as next generation short wavelength division multiplexing (SWDM) applications.

Building on the history of bend-optimized LaserWave FLEX 550 (OM4) Fiber, LaserWave FLEX WideBand fiber meets and is fully backwards compatible with current OM4 requirements while extending the ability of conventional OM4 multimode fiber to support multiple wavelengths. Unlike traditional multimode fiber, which supports transmission at the single wavelength of 850 nanometers (nm), LaserWave FLEX WideBand fiber will support traffic over a range of wavelengths from 850nm to 950nm. This will enable multiple lanes of traffic over the same strand of fiber and significantly improve the bandwidth capacity of multimode fiber while maintaining its cost advantages for short distance applications, up to 300 meters (m) or more. The fiber will support four wavelength 100 Gb/s applications, while providing bandwidth for tomorrow's 400Gb/s and higher speeds.

"We have been working to offer datacenter end-users a solution for 400 Gb/s transmission and SWDM provides the possibility of duplex 100 Gb/s links while allowing a graceful 400G solution using only eight fibers," said Andrew Oliviero, Senior Director, Product Line Management |Research and Development for OFS. "WDM technology is well known for its use in single mode transmission, but has only recently been adapted for use with vertical cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs), used in short wave multimode applications. The use of SWDM in these applications enables multimode fiber to maintain the cost advantage of multimode fiber systems over single-mode fiber in short links and greatly increases the total link capacity."

About OFS

OFS is a world-leading designer, manufacturer and provider of optical fiber, optical fiber cable, connectivity, FTTX and specialty photonics solutions. Our marketing, sales, manufacturing and research teams provide forward-looking, innovative products and solutions in areas including Telecommunications, Medicine, Industrial Automation, Sensing, Government, Aerospace and Defense applications. We provide reliable, cost effective optical solutions to enable our customers to meet the needs of today's and tomorrow's digital and energy consumers and businesses.

OFS' corporate lineage dates back to 1876 and includes technology powerhouses such as AT&T and Lucent Technologies. Today, OFS is owned by Furukawa Electric, a multi-billion dollar global leader in optical communications.

For more information, please visit www.ofsoptics.com.

SOURCE OFS