OEC, our Optics Excellence Center, is where we study our transceivers with a fine-tooth comb.

This laboratory is dedicated to :

• R&D
• New product qualification (NPI)
• Technical support
• RMA analysis to generate FAR (Failure Analysis Report) and CAR (Corrective Action Report)
• Available resource for an external party

Our Optical engineers make the most of this center to deliver technical feedback to our customers, partners and technical committee. The state-of-the-art equipment allow testing of modules at bit rates from 100 Mbps up to 400 Gbps and multiple protocols [e.g. GE, Sonet/SDH, Fiber Channel, OTN, etc]. We are able to verify over temperature and with almost any humidity level, that the optical transceivers comply with the standards defined by IEEE, ITU-T or MSA (multi-source agreement). All these tests are carried out in an automated way thanks to our SkyTest software program which has been developed internally to respond to our testing requirements. The test results are stored in a database where all the information about the device-under-test is kept.

There is a saying that ‘Temperature is the killer!’. To ensure the compliance of our transceivers over temperature cycles, our automated test setups challenge several DUTs in a climatic chamber and measure the followings over temperature.

Transmitter characteristics such as :

• output optical power
• optical spectrum including wavelength stability, spectral width, SMSR, etc
• Tx eye diagram and compliance with mask
• dispersion penalty over fiber spools
• Receiver sensitivity (average and OMA)
• Accuracy of DDM values
• Electrical power consumption

Our OEC is equipped with four major test and qualification lines:

• Low bitrate line; capable of testing transceivers from 100 Mbps to 10Gbps
• Mid-high bitrate line, conducting physical layer test on 10G, 16G, 25G, 40G and 100G modules
• Ultra-high bitrate line, dedicated to performing measurements on 50G, 100G, 200G and 400G transceivers
• And last but not least : a setup dedicated to expeditiously testing QSFP+ / QSFP28 modules over temperature, thanks to our thermostream

Our ultra-high-bitrate test-bench allows us to test QSFP28 single-lambda, QSFP56-DD, CFP2 DCO, etc at both physical layer and medial layer.

Thanks to the versatility of our test setup and the complementary set of equipment on this test-bench, interoperability test at physical as well as media layer is an indispensable part of our qualification process on such modules.

In the course of interoperability test, the transmitter and receiver of Skylane transceivers are tested with a number of counterpart Tx and Rx from major manufacturers. This brings confidence to our customers that they can always use our transceivers at their side of the link and communicate with the other side with a comfortable link margin and without any concern.