Broadex Technologies' Thermal AWG utilizes silica-on-silicon PLC technology to passively multiplex or de-multiplex up to 96 wavelengths for DWDM bandwidth multiplication over a single fiber.  Thermal AWGs require a heating system and control electronics to keep the PLC device at a constant temperature for optimal operation. This is included with the device and calibrated for immediate deployment.  Broadex Technologies offers a full line of MSA-compatible Thermal AWGs with channel spacings of 50GHz, 75GHz, 100GHz, and 150GHz, covering the O,C, L and E Bands.

In a flat-top AWG, the passband shape of each channel is designed to be wider than a natural Gaussian passband shape as well as having a flat frequency response over the channel clear window.  This increases the insertion loss, but allows for more uniform behavior over temperature, reducing the tolerances required by lasers and filters in the system and enabling high overall system performance with lower cost.