Mitsubishi Electric: Sprint 10Gbps High Speed ​​Optical Device Market

During the 12th China International Optoelectronic Expo, “China Electronics News” reporter interviewed the world’s largest optical component supplier Mitsubishi Electric Optical Communications on the FTTH market evolution, the key to the industrialization of FTTH optical devices, and the FTTH optical device technology R&D roadmap. Mr. Watanabe Wataru, Chief Technical Director of Device Technology Development Department.

Japan applies 1OGE-PON in 2012

Since FTTH technology has been used in the communications industry, the scale continues to expand. Mr. Watanabe told reporters that in 2004 and 2005, the GE-PON market in Japan and South Korea began to develop. So far, Japan's FTTH subscribers are about 12 million, but the recent growth rate is not as fast as in the past few years and it has begun to stabilize. "According to industry development goals, the total number of FTTH access subscribers in Japan will reach 20 million in the four or five years from now," he said. "In terms of access technology, currently Japan's 10GE-PON is still in the research and development stage. The popularity of the technology depends on the planning of NTT, the largest network operator in Japan, but the company has not yet decided when to launch 10GE-PON services.” He further stated that according to rumors, NTT may be ready to implement 10GE-PON in 2012, but At the beginning of the estimate, I am afraid that there will be few users and not many areas involved.

At the same time, at present, China has evolved into the world's largest FTTH market. In the next two years, the FTTH market in China will maintain its strong demand.

Mitsubishi Electric began research and development of optical semiconductors more than 50 years ago. In the 1980s, Mitsubishi Electric took the lead in completing the production of semiconductor lasers. Therefore, it has a long history in the field of optical semiconductors. In the 1990s Mitsubishi Electric's optical components were mainly supplied to the Japanese and U.S. markets. Since then, with the rise of China's optical communication component manufacturers in recent years, nearly 60% of Mitsubishi Electric's optical devices are shipped to China's optical communication component suppliers, and have become the world's largest supplier of FTTH LD/PD optical components. Mr. Watanabe considers the success of Mitsubishi Electric's products and markets to a great extent because the company owns wafer production technology and has high yield, thus ensuring the stability, high reliability, and low cost of the device.

10Gbps or higher device is the product focus

China's system integrators and component vendors are shifting their focus to more than 10 Gbps applications to increase their market competitiveness. According to the evolution of the market, Mitsubishi Electric has already begun the commercialization of high-speed optical devices with more than 10Gbps. For example, the company has developed a multi-purpose product series for 10Gbps and 40Gbps optical device products. Now we are developing 10GE-PON products and have begun to provide samples and continuously improve product performance according to the market and customer requirements. "For us, ensuring the market share of high-speed applications above 10Gbps in the Chinese market is the key to success," said Mr. Watanabe. In the future, Mitsubishi Electric will focus on 40Gbps and 100Gbps high-speed products.

In 10GE-PON products, Mitsubishi Electric is fully promoting DFB-TOSA, APD-ROSA, EML-TOSA and other three products. Among them, DFB-TOSA FU-456RDF-5M1/-9M2 DFB-LD has been mass-produced, with a wide range of operating temperature, low power consumption, etc.; APD-ROSA FU-357RPA series products have the industry's highest level of sensitivity. The FU-357RPA-9M1 under development will be used for long-distance DWDM, with features of small attenuation, high sensitivity and high OSNR. EML-TOSA FU-612REA-2M1 is an upgraded product with high extinction ratio and low transposition voltage characteristics. According to SONET/SDH specifications, 40km TDM products have been mass-produced and are suitable for XFP walkie-talkies. In addition, products with a transmission distance of 80 kilometers are also under development.

In terms of 40Gbps optical devices, Mitsubishi Electric currently has two types of EML devices and PD devices, all complying with SONET/SDH specifications for VSR and achieving mass production. EML devices achieve low power consumption through the built-in EML driver. The PD device has the industry's top high receive sensitivity and wide-area receive range. The 40G optical modules comply with the XLMD-MSA industry standard.

For the commercialization of 100Gbps, Mr. Watanabe said that they estimate that in 2012, the market will start using 100Gbps products.

Low device cost is key to FTTH market

Speaking of FTTH GE-PON's experience, Mr. Watanabe believes that since GE-PON is a product that leads to each end user, the devices used for GE-PON should be inexpensive. To reduce product costs, on the one hand, it is necessary to expand production, and on the other hand, it is to increase the yield of product production. Mitsubishi Electric is relying on these two points to lower the cost of optical devices.

The reporter learned that Mitsubishi Electric currently uses 2-inch wafer production technology. Mr. Watanabe said that although current 2-inch wafers look a bit small, they consider that 2-inch wafer production technology can completely cope with the current production status, and the current 2-inch technology achieves the best stability, so the company also No migration to 3-inch or 4-inch wafer production.