Highlighting groundbreaking achievements in advancing optical communications, transport, networking, fiber-based products, photonic integration circuits, and related innovations, these awards place a strong emphasis on technology and product commercialization, showcasing excellence in the business landscape.

Coherent’s 200G four-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM4) distributed-feedback laser and Mach-Zehnder modulator (DFB-MZ), combined monolithically in a photonic integrated circuit (PIC), has won the award for most innovative product in the category of Innovative Photonics Component.

“We are very proud to receive this award for the DFB-MZ, which to our knowledge we were the first to demonstrate in March 2023,” said Dr Sanjai Parthasarathi, chief marketing officer at the award ceremony on October 3rd. “We have combined into one PIC the functional elements and integration experience of several of our most advanced devices, which are each breakthrough innovations on their own. This PIC incorporates our knowledge from electro­absorption-modulated lasers, IQ modulators for coherent applications, and tunable lasers with Mach-Zehnder modulators. It will enable higher-performance, longer-reach PAM4 optical links.”

The other awards went to RAM photonics for Medusa in the fiber category, Marvell for their Nova PAM4 electro-optics Digital Signal Processor (DSP) platform as data center innovation, Lightwave Logic as Hybrid PIC/Optical Integration Platform Award winner, the Most Innovative PON/5G/FTTx Product Award went to the Huawei FTTR Solution, China Mobile was the Optical Transport Award winner, Ciena’s WaveLogic 6 got the Pluggable Transciever/Co-Packaged Module prize, Keysight became Innovative Test Equipment winner, and Infinera got awarded in the Chip-Scale Packaging/Optical Sub Assembly category.

Further reading: Julie Sheridan Eng: “Datacom in the era of AI – introducing higher-speed transceivers at a faster pace than ever before”, PhotonicsViews 20(4), September 2023, p. 1