Genoa plans to amplify the optical metro

(Telephony) Optical semiconductor start-up Genoa today announced its first product, a single-chip amplifier the company believes will provide the foundation for cost-effective use of optical technology in metropolitan networks and, eventually, at access points.

Currently, carriers wanting to use optical technology in the metro have had to use amplifiers--primarily erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs)--designed for long-haul use. While EDFAs are effective amplifiers, they do not work reliably with most switching systems, according to Rick Gold, president and CEO of Genoa.

“There really isn’t a good solution today to do amplification cost effectively out near the edge, because the technology in place was developed for the long-haul, and it’s an expensive technology,” he said.

Genoa’s linear optical amplifier (LOA) provides switching capability in a package that is 1/100th the size of an EDFA and uses significantly less power, Gold said. In addition, while the LOA will be less expensive than EDFA solutions but “competitively” priced initially, its ability to be produced like computer chips should decrease significantly in the future, in both cost and size, Gold said.

“It’s a traditional semiconductor model,” he said. “It’s challenging technology and it’s expensive equipment, but once you have it, you have the ability to really scale to volumes. That’s essential to our philosophy here.”

Single-chip, optical amplification technology has existed for 30 years, but previous semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) have not been commercially viable because they distort signals when multiple channels are present, which is the case in WDM and DWDM optical systems, Gold said. The LOA will amplify signals without generating such distortion, or “crosstalk,” he added.

Genoa’s most recent round of funding included support from Global Crossing and WorldCom. Initial customer testing of the LOA is ongoing, and commercial samples of the chips will be available late this year, Gold said.