Product Guide
WaveShaper
®
Series A
Family of Programmable
Optical Processors
WEB ENABLED
WaveShaper
®
—Family of Programmable Optical Processors
The new WaveShaper Series A Programmable Optical Processors provide a range of program-
®
mable optical filtering and switching options for optical R&D and production test applications.
Based on Finisar’s high-resolution, solid-state Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCoS) optical engine,
the WaveShaper family provides extremely fine control of filter characteristics, including center
wavelength, bandwidth, shape, dispersion and attenuation. The WaveShaper family is used in
a wide variety of applications, including optical communications, pulsed lasers in the medical
and material processing area as well as optical sensors.
Normalised Transfer Fundtion (dB)
0
Applications
Filtering with arbitrary
spectral shapes
Filtering with variable bandwidth and with
arbitrary spectral shapes is of importance in
system test experiments. For example, the
influence of cascading of optical filters on the
transmission quality can be investigated by
programming the resulting filter shape into the
WaveShaper.
-5
0
-10
-10
100GHz
90 GHz
80 GHz
70 GHz
60 GHz
50 GHz
40 GHz
30 GHz
20 GHz
10 GHz
-15
Loss (dB)
-20
-20
-60
-30
-40
-20
-60
20
40
60
-40
Frequency Offset (GHz)
-50
-60
-0.1
-0.08
-0.06
-0.04
-0.02
-70
0
0.02
0.04
0.06
0.08
0.1
Frequency Offset (GHz)
Mux/DeMux and De-/Interleaving
The WaveShaper 4000A can serve as a
programmable Multiplexer/Demultiplexer or
Interleaver/De-Interleaver. It can incorporate
basically any channel spacing, including non-
equally spaced channels. It fully supports
Flexgrid™, the standard approach to flexible Grid
network architectures. As it can operate in both
directions, it can be used as a wavelength splitter
as well as a combiner.
Mux/DeMux
De-/Interleaving
Component and System Loading
Generation of controllable optical combs is key in
a variety of module and system test applications.
For example, loading an amplifier with a
representative power spectrum is required for
proper amplifier testing. Similar requirements exist
for testing optical systems involving amplified
links. The WaveShaper can create individual
spectral lines – even with shapes as if they were
modulated.
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Dispersion Compensation
In system testing, verification of dispersion
budgets and verification of sensitivity of
transmission systems to group delay ripple
(and other dispersion imperfections) is
of importance. Several members of the
WaveShaper family allow setting dispersion
values of up to 100 ps/nm (per 50 GHz channel)
as well as creating group delay ripple with high
spectral frequency.
Power (normalized)
Laser Pulse Compression,
Shaping and Generation
Pulsed Lasers are utilized in a large number of
medical, material processing, communications
and other applications. Several of these
applications require very short optical pulses,
for example when athermal ablation is required.
The WaveShaper 1000/SP allows dynamic
compression of optical pulses and therefore
enables stable operation of such laser pulses in
the femtosecond regime.
Certain other applications, in particular in
the communications area, require specific
pulse shapes (like rectangular for example) or
particular bit sequences.
1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
-10
-5
0
5
1
0.5
0
1
0.5
0
1
0.5
0
-10
-5
0
5
10
10
Time (ps)
Rectangular pulse
Intensity (normalized)
Time (ps)
Creation of pulse patterns: pulse sequences of
1010, 0111, 1111 have been created from a single
input pulse
Gain Equalization
In Communication system test beds a number
of parameters needs to be verified. This includes
the tolerance of the transmission system to
spectral shapes of the gain. The WaveShaper
allows creating such gain shapes with very
high resolution (down to 0.01 dB attenuation
steps) and therefore allows creation and also
compensation of such gain shapes.
Gain Flattening Performance
10
7.5
Measured Power (dB)
5
2.5
0
191.25
-2.5
-5
-7.5
-10
ASE
Filter Pro le
Flattened Trace
191.75
192.25
192.75
193.25
193.75
194.25
194.75
195.25
195.75
Frequency (THz)
Page 3
WaveShaper
®
—Family of Programmable Optical Processors
Applications
Power Splitting and Broadcasting
The WaveShaper 4000 and 16000 both have the
ability to split an input signal between multiple
output ports. Simple structures like wavelength-
dependent couplers and splitters (Figure 1) can
be created with user defined coupling ratios and
frequency dependencies.
Figure 1: Splitter
Programmable Interferometer
In addition to just splitting the power, the phase of
the signals in the different ports can also be adjusted.
This allows the user to create, on the fly, more
complex structures like delay line interferometers
(e.g. DPSK-Demodulator – shown in Figure 2)
or DQPSK-Demodulators with a variable, easily-
programmable, optical transfer function (Figure 3).
More complex functions, such as the all-optical
Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) filter shown in
Figure 4 can also be easily created.
These capabilities can be best described as “just
like an Optical FPGA”, where an optical functional
element (component) can be created within a
fraction of a second just by uploading a definition
table. The ability to easily generate complex
interferometric structures simplifies many areas of
research which require an arbitrary optical transfer
function, including the ability to share (or combine)
power between multiple ports.
Figure 2: Variable Delay Line Interferometer
194.8
0
Transmitted Power (dB)
-5
-10
-15
-20
-25
194.9
195
195.1
Frequency (THz)
Port 1
Port 2
Port 3
Port 4
Figure 3: Optical transfer function of a DQPSK demodulator generated
in a WaveShaper 4000A using the Fourier processor software
Figure 4: Optical transfer function of an all-optical DFT filter with 15 GHz FSR
Page 4
Products
WaveShaper 100A
Tunable Optical Filter
Fully programmable, DWDM tunable optical filter with user-selectable band-pass (flat-top)
and Gaussian filter shapes. The filter bandwidth is programmable in 1 GHz increments from
10 GHz up to 1000 GHz, with the center frequency programmable in 1 GHz increments over
the whole C- band. Ideal for production test applications.
0
-10
Gaussian
-20
Band Pass
-30
-40
-50
-60
-250
-200
-150
-100
-50
0
50
Frequency Offset (GHz)
100
150
200
250
WaveShaper 500A
Programmable Optical Filter
This is an optical filter covering the C-band with arbitrarily programmable attenuation shape.
Typical applications include gain equalization, channel selection and channel shaping.
Gain Flattening Performance
10
7.5
Measured Power (dB)
5
2.5
0
191.25
-2.5
-5
-7.5
-10
ASE
Filter Pro le
Flattened Trace
191.75
192.25
192.75
193.25
193.75
194.25
194.75
195.25
195.75
Frequency (THz)
Page 5