Phoenix Photonics, leading supplier of Few Mode Fiber (FMF) components, today announced it will demonstrate its latest product – the Cladding Pumped Few Mode Fiber EDFA (FM-EDFA) – at ECOC 2015.

The product is the latest addition to the product range targeted at the Space Division Multiplexing (SDM) market and is a direct result of work undertaken in MODE-GAP, the European collaborative R&D project investigating SDM to address the potential future capacity crunch within the telecommunications networks. The product is the result of four years’ R&D focussed activity by the Optoelectronics Research Centre at University of Southampton and was developed to form part of the transmission experiments for the project.

The new FM-EDFA will be manufactured by Phoenix Photonics and fully compatible with the OFS designed six-mode fibres. It will complement the recently released core pumped amplifier providing alternative solutions for researchers investigating Few Mode Fiber mode-division multiplexing (MDM) transmission.

Steering the success of the European collaboration, Project Manager and Phoenix CEO, Dr. Ian Giles, said: “We are very excited to demonstrate the first commercially available FM-EDFA that has been a key component in achieving the excellent transmission results within MODE-GAP. Developing the amplifier to an integrated instrument has been very challenging and we are pleased to be in a position to offer this six-mode version with high performance specification.”

The MODE-GAP project is supported within the European Commission’s seventh Framework Programme and has brought together leading European organisations to explore MDM as a potential telecommunications capacity enhancement solution.

“When the project was initiated in 2009 there were no components commercially available to build transmission experiments,” added Dr. Giles. “The required components were researched and demonstrated within the project and several of these have now been commercialised.”

If you would like to arrange a telephone interview with Dr. Giles to discuss the work of the MODE-GAP project, please contact Brian Dolby on +44(0)1636 812152 or by email at brian.dolby@proactive-pr.com.

For further information please visit http://modegap.eu/.