Amid ever-growing demand for high-speed internet and data services, a global manufacturing company with a vitally important Australian facility is well-placed to capitalise.
The wavelength management company Finisar has achieved no fewer than 15 world firsts. They include the first liquid-crystal on silicon wavelength selective switch (LCoS WSS) in 2006, the first flexible-grid WSS in 2010, the first quad WSS in 2020 and, earlier this year, the first low-cost edge WSS – with plenty of others in the years in between.
It’s fair to say the company is committed to innovation and is benefiting from its relatively high research and development spend (more than 15 per cent). It is estimated that half the world’s internet traffic passes through switches based on Finisar’s original invention.
A WSS is an optical device used in fibre-optic communication networks to route individual wavelengths (channels) from an input fibre to one or more output fibres without converting the signal to electrical form.
Finisar specialises in wavelength management components and subsystems, which it supplies to networking equipment manufacturers to allow end-users to adjust the capacity of their internet data streams to suit different needs.
“The markets we are in constantly require new products,” said Senior Director of Engineering at Finisar Jon Bulman. “We’re on a never-ending path of evolution and it’s very much part of our business.”
Bespoke products
To maintain this momentum, the company’s Sydney base blends engineering, research and development and manufacturing, which this caters for the complexity of the design of its products as well as the precise specifications required for its machines. In the one place, the teams designs its own automated machines, writes the software and develops test instruments alongside the product design process.
For example, for its WSS switches, the team sends laser light through the optical circuit as it is being assembled, and manoeuvres the position of each component based on the optical properties being measured.
“In most manufacturing, you put something in place using an x-and-y coordinate, but we make machines that actually send laser light through the product, analyse the outcome and then drive the motion control feedback on the outcome of the light,” Bulman said. “We make our own instruments to both send the laser signal and detect it.
“The other interesting thing is, if you have a series of optical components and you move one of them, the beams of light will then hit the next part in a different way. So we have to move all the components simultaneously and find a solution for that set of parts.”
Some of those components are measured in nanometres, so precision is key. A new product then goes through a testing stage which also fine-tunes the machine that made it. Once a prototype is ready, it is sent with its customised machine and software to the company’s site in either South Korea or China, where it is replicated to scale up production of key subassemblies.
The assembly work in China is only for the optical components, which is quite a labour-intensive activity. The hermetically sealed optical subassembly is sent to Sydney where it is integrated into a module with electronics and software.
From here, the product is calibrated to meet the customer’s requirements.
“By sending light into it and characterising that individual product’s optical performance, we can determine images that need to be put on the LCoS that will give us the output we need.
“We learn the algorithms to create the images by interrogating the unit. Using AI, the systems actually learn how to program products, and the more products of that type we make, the more efficient the software systems.”
How wavelength selection switches work
An incoming optical fibre carries many channels of data, each at different wavelengths – this is called dense wavelength division multiplexing. Through the WSS, network operators can decide which wavelength is directed to which of the many output optical fibres, directing data to different parts of the network in the process. An additional functionality allows the output power levels of the different wavelengths to be controlled.
The core switching technology relies on a liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS) device. The LCoS silicon backplane consists of thousands of individually addressable pixels. By applying a voltage to each pixel, a periodic phase pattern can be generated in an overlying liquid crystal layer. This alters the phase front of the reflected light, effectively steering the direction of light incident on the LCoS to a desired direction.
A prism and diffraction grating are used to disperse the multiple wavelengths of light in the incoming beam over the surface of the LCoS. Essentially, the LCoS acts like a programmable mirror. By altering the phase profile of the liquid crystal layer over the pixels, each wavelength can be steered independently to an output fibre (or port) of the WSS.
Incorporating WSSes into modern fibre-optic networks allows network operators to locally add or drop network traffic or support mesh networks and traffic reconfiguration.
Retaining a level of control within the organisation is a key strategy for the company’s resilience. The final assembly operation and integration in Sydney keeps the technology in-house, while the people who work on improvements have immediate hands-on access to the product.
The factories in Korea and China are connected to a central database, recording test data parameters, which allows the team in Sydney real-time visibility of every step of every product being assembled. If there is an issue, they can turn off the machines. All materials used are barcoded to ensure only the correct components are being used and allow full traceability back to suppliers.
Finisar has cemented itself in a future-proof industry. Its initial customers were telecom companies such as Nokia and Huawei, though their markets have now evolved to include internet service providers.
“The evolution of our products are really for the increase in data traffic driven by the expansion of AI, which creates a need for higher bandwidth communications between data centres,” Bulman said. “That will drive a future need for our products beyond what’s traditionally telecom.
“Ninety-five per cent of data travels through optical fibres – whether it’s our internet, mobile phones, watching Netflix, at some point it all converges to go across multiple fibre networks.”
Finisar is looking beyond these core networks, and has just released a new low-cost edge WSS platform designed to optimise network efficiency while reducing costs.
“Sometimes our customers, when we show them our products, are astounded by how few components are inside. If you look at our competitors, they’re full of little glass components, all doing separate functions. We’ve taken a different approach of having fewer physical parts, but each part has a more complex function.
“This has two positive aspects to it. One is that there’s simply fewer components in the finished box. The other is that it’s more amenable to the process of automating the assembly. These things go together and enable us to make products for sectors of the market that are more price-sensitive. We can see ways to automate the manufacture of products that will provide very good performance.”
Hunger for innovation
Bulman believes one of the main challenges facing the company is that, currently, the opportunity to increase sales is largely dependent on a customer designing a new system that needs more capacity.
“To expand our reach into different customers and their applications, our engineering team is constantly being pushed to develop new technologies and new approaches, and, in a way, that’s what makes it fun,” Bulman said. “But it also means that our engineering activity has to be very carefully focused on understanding what the customers want and how to deliver that in the shortest possible time.
“And some of these changes are quite radical – the evolutionary steps can be big.”
Another resilience challenge is the potential for trade friction, especially relevant to an organisation that exports 100 per cent of its products.
“We are very much considering where parts should be made. Where is a reliable source of materials? Where can we assemble things which won’t be impacted by trade issues? How do we make sure we are fully compliant with any trade restrictions? It’s obviously a different type of work from traditional technology and design development, but it’s becoming an equally important part of resilience.”
This story was published in the August 2025 edition of create with the headline “Precision at every wavelength”.
