Exfo Electro-Optical Engineering said it has sold about $2 million in equipment to a tier-1 network operator from the Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region.
The unnamed operator has purchased Exfo’s FTB-5600 Distributed PMD Analyzers, which it will use to enable a network upgrade to higher transmission rates.
Specifically, the analyzers will be used to quantify the level of polarization mode dispersion (PMD) on specific fiber sections of the operator’s core network. That will allow the customer to identify and repair only the impacted sections of its network when upgrading to 40 Gbps now, and 100 Gbps in the future.
The FTB-5600 Distributed PMD Analyzer is a module hosted inside the recently launched FTB-500 platform (story here), which allows Exfo customers to carry out a wide range of tests, from optical link characterization to 40G next-generation SONET/SDH testing.
Exfo’s FTB-5600 measures PMD as a function of distance, whereas traditional PMD analyzers only provide a total end-to-end value for an entire optical network, Exfo explained. With traditional methods, network operators have therefore been compelled to deploy dispersion compensators throughout their networks to alleviate high PMD levels, or else overhaul their entire systems, Exfo said.
