Ewing, NJ - April 17, 2007

Discovery Semiconductors, Inc., has provided balanced photoreceivers to the University of Kiel in Germany for their research on multilevel modulation formats for high-speed optical communications. Researcher Murat Serbay demonstrated a 16-ary modulation format at 42.8 Gb/s based on four phase levels combined with four amplitude levels^[1]. This work was presented at last month’s Optical Fiber Conference (OFC) in Anaheim, CA.

Prof. Werner Rosenkranz’s group at the University of Kiel is a world leader in the field of advanced optical modulation formats.  Prof. Rosenkranz said, “This sophisticated modulation technique enables fiber optic communications with more than three times higher spectral efficiency as compared to conventional OOK techniques. Furthermore, 40 Gb/s transmission only requires 10 Gb/s optoelectronic components. One of the key enabling technologies is Discovery’s balanced photoreceiver.”

Mr. Abhay Joshi, President/CEO of Discovery Semiconductors, added, “Since 2001, we have been supplying the University of Kiel with high speed balanced photoreceivers for their work on differential phase-shift keyed (DPSK) modulation formats. They were the first to propose and evaluate DPSK and DQPSK for fiber optic communications. We are excited to see that these DPSK/DQPSK techniques are now getting deployed in 10 Gb/s and 40 Gb/s commercial telecom systems using our balanced receivers.”  Mr. Joshi continued, “Similarly, we expect 16-ary work to be deployed for the future generation 40 Gb/s and 100 Gb/s commercial telecom systems.”

Discovery Semiconductors is an industry leader in manufacturing ultrafast, high optical power handling InGaAs photodetectors, radio frequency over fiber optical receivers, balanced optical receivers and several other custom products for applications ranging from analog RF links to ultrafast digital communications. They have experience with Space and High Reliability Military Projects, and their customers include Fortune 500 telecom and aerospace companies, defense organizations, universities and emerging communication companies.

For additional information, including complete product specifications, operational capabilities and pricing, or to discuss your application in detail, please call Discovery at: (609) 434-1311 or fax: (609) 434-1317.

[1] M. Serbay, et al. “42.8 Gbit/s, 4 Bits per Symbol 16-ary Inverse-RZ-QASK-DQPSK Transmission Experiment without Polmux,” OFC 2007, Anaheim, CA, March 24-29, 2007, paper OThL2.