WHAT ARE FIBER OPTIC TRANSPONDERS?

by www.fiber-mart.com

1. WHAT IS FIBER OPTIC TRANSPONDER?

 

In optical fiber communications, a transponder is the element that sends and receives the optical signal from a fiber. A transponder is typically characterized by its data rate and the maximum distance the signal can travel.

 

>> The difference between a fiber optic transponder and transceiver

 

A transponder and transceiver are both functionally similar devices that convert a full-duplex electrical signal in a full-duplex optical signal. The difference between the two being that transceivers interface electrically with the host system using a serial interface, whereas transponders use a parallel interface to do so.

 

So transponders provide easier to handle lower-rate parallel signals, but are bulkier and consume more power than transceivers.

 

>> Major functions of a fiber optic transponder includes:

 

Electrical and optical signals conversions

Serialization and deserialization

Control and monitoring

 

2. APPLICATIONS OF FIBER OPTIC TRANSPONDER

Multi-rate, bidirectional fiber transponders convert short-reach 10 Gb/s and 40 Gb/s optical signals to long-reach, single-mode dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) optical interfaces.

 

The modules can be used to enable DWDM applications such as fiber relief, wavelength services, and Metro optical DWDM access overlay on existing optical infrastructure.

 

Supporting dense wavelength multiplexing schemes, fiber optic transponders can expand the useable bandwidth of a single optical fiber to over 300 Gb/s.

 

Transponders also provide a standard line interface for multiple protocols through replaceable 10G small form-factor pluggable (XFP) client-side optics.

 

The data rates and typical protocols transported include synchronous optical network/synchronous digital hierarchy (SONET/SDH) (OC-192 SR1), Gigabit Ethernet (10GBaseS and 10GBaseL), 10 G Fibre Channel (10 GFC) and SONET G.709 forward error correction (FEC)(10.709 Gb/s).

 

Fiber optic transponder modules can also support 3R operation (reshape, retime, regenerate) at supported rates.

 

Often, fiber optic transponders are used to for testing interoperability and compatibility. Typical tests and measurements include jitter performance, receiver sensitivity as a function of bit error rate (BER), and transmission performance based on path penalty.Some fiber optic transponders are also used to perform transmitter eye measurements.

 

>> Major Applications of fiber optic transponder

 

300-pin MSA fiber optic transponders can transparently carry a native 10G LAN PHY, SONET/SDH and Fibre Channel payload with a carrier grade DWDM Optical Transport Network (OTN) interface without the need for bandwidth limitation.

 

Transponders offer G.709 compliant Digital Wrapper, Enhanced Forward Error Correction (FEC) and Electrical Dispersion Compensation (EDC) for advanced optical performance and management functions superior to those found in DWDM Transponder systems.

 

They support full C or L band tunability and is designed to interoperate with any Open DWDM line system that support 50GHz spaced wavelengths per the ITU-T grid.

 

Enables reach extension on SONET, Storage Area Network (SAN), Gigabit Ethernet, and dispersion limited links

Wavelength services and Metro optical access overlay

Agile Optical Networks