Transceivers and Transceiver Cooling

A fiber optic transceiver is a device that sends and receives data by using fiber optic technology. The transceiver is able to encode/decode data into light pulses which then becomes electrical signals. 

Fiber optic transceivers can be used for many devices. Some of these include fiber optic multiplexer, fiber optic converters, fiber optic network cards, and fiber optic high-speed ball machines. 

Ethernet Transceivers

Ethernet connections, such as fiber-optic gigabit, 10G Ethernet, 40G Ethernet and 100G Ethernet, use transceivers of the following types:

• SFP / SFP+ – Small form-factor pluggable transceiver
• QSFP – Quad small form-factor pluggable transceiver
• XFP – 10 Gigabit small form-factor pluggable transceiver

Key Transceiver Component: TOSAs

Transceivers are a crucial piece of fiber optics network. Within a transceiver, one of the most critical components is the TOSA or the transmitter optical sub-assembly. TOSAs are what converts electrical signals into optical signals. 

Within the TOSA, semiconductor devices called lasers are the most common light source used for generating the transmitted signal. The receivers section of the transceiver are called a receive optical sub-assembly or ROSA, typically contain a photodetector that is used to convert light into an electrical signal. 

Transceiver Cooling

Efficient laser cooling is absolutely critical to fiber optic network performance. Phononic supports transceiver and TOSA manufacturers with high-quality thermoelectric coolers (called TECs). TECs are a type of semiconductor device that cools the laser diodes inside of TOSAs. Our TECs are proven to deliver up to 60% better heat pumping density than typical performance. They do this while also delivering up to 30% lower power consumption. Phononic can provide application-specific TECs to optimize performance specifically for certain TOSA designs. This lets optical component manufacturers differentiate their transceiver offerings "inside the laser package" where industry standards won't limit their choices.