More laser power or less optical loss?

When a photonic module doesn’t meet its optical power budget, the first instinct is often straightforward:

Increase the laser power

While this may compensate for excess optical loss, it is rarely the most efficient solution. Higher laser power can lead to:
🔷 Reduced laser lifetime
🔷 Increased power consumption
🔷 More heat generation within the package
🔷 Additional cooling requirements
🔷 Thermal hotspots that can affect neighboring photonic circuits on the PIC

These challenges can be managed, but often at the expense of additional complexity, cost, and design effort.

Before increasing laser power, it’s worth asking:

 Where is the optical loss actually coming from?
In many photonic systems, avoidable losses originate from the optical interface itself, such as:

🔶 Connector losses
🔶 Fiber selection and mode-field mismatch
🔶 Unnecessary fiber length
🔶 Fiber-to-PIC alignment accuracy
🔶 Fiber array core positioning accuracy

Optimizing these elements reduces optical loss at its source, allowing the available laser power to be used more effectively.

At MicroAlign, we focus on one of these key contributors: fiber array accuracy. By actively aligning every individual fiber, we achieve <100 nm core positioning accuracy, resulting in lower and more uniform fiber-to-chip coupling losses.

The result?
✔ Higher system efficiency
✔ Lower power requirements
✔ Improved channel-to-channel consistency
✔ Better sensing performance and dynamic range
✔ More design margin for the entire photonic system

The best photon is the one you never lose. Before adding more optical power, ensure you’re making the most of the power you already have.

Interested in learning more about our low loss fiber arrays?

Download our presentation to explore MicroAlign’s active-alignment technology at https://microalign.nl/resources/

Author: Dario Lo Cascio Program Manager at MicroAlign