Fibre to the home

has developed a line of high sensitivity radio frequency integrated circuits (RFICs) designed for use in Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) applications.

Samples of the FTTH 6200 series RFIC are available for order today and volume shipments are expected in the first half of 2006.

The TriAccess family of devices is designed to reduce unwanted noise in the Optical Network Terminal (ONT), the interface box found on the side of a house, to as low as 2.5pA/rtHz level (2.5 picoamps per root Hertz).

According to the company, most solutions today add as much as 5.0pA/rtHz and above and can be difficult to manufacture. TriAccess has filed patents on its high sensitivity technology, which allows noise improvement without degradation in other areas such as distortion.

In FTTH applications, TriAccess’ products are expected to reduce the cost of the ONT attached to each house by up to $20 and possibly more. They can also increase the effective range of optical signals four-to-six additional kilometres beyond the range of systems today.

“There are several applications for our products beyond FTTH. For example, one device under development is intended to double the number of users that can share Gigabit Passive Optical Networks (GPON),” said Brian Bauer, Vice President of Marketing at the company.

“With today’s preferred Telco video delivery system, RF overlay, our solution enables a 64-way split to accommodate users connected to an Optical Line Terminal (OLT) port at the serving central office, whereas today only 32 users can share such a port. Our future plan also includes products to alleviate the cable TV return path bottleneck, and RF power amplifiers for emerging wireless applications where signal clarity and power efficiency are critical in reducing capital and operating costs," he added.

TriAccess Technologies, founded in May of 2003, is a privately funded fabless video semiconductor company.