From Sea to Space: MPBC heritage led to continued success in Outer Space

With our extensive heritage in providing reliable optical amplification solutions, we’ve gained a reputation for developing and producing high-performance and reliable Optical Amplifier (OA) solutions for the Telecom, Scientific, Military and Space industries.

Building on our Telecom amplification solutions, we adapted our OAs to meet the strict reliability and low-SWaP requirements of aerospace and military applications. As a result, we developed ruggedized gain modules intended for use in harsh environments

We used the expertise we gained through the development of reliable, high quality and high-performance OAs for Submarine and Military applications, and applied it to a suite of OA products adapted for space. This has led us to extend our technology leadership to optical fiber amplification solutions for space.

MPBC’s successes in Space include the Fiber sensor demonstrator system on board of the ESA Proba 2 in 2009 and still operating today.  This was the first time MPBC qualified COTS fiber optic components for use in space. This program also led to MPBC achieving TRL-9 for the first time!

The ESA/DLR OSIRIS Flying laptop experiment launched in 2016 and included MPB’s 21dBm EDFA which incorporated all COTS components, also achieving TRL-9 status.

A follow-on program for the delivery of a ruggedized EDFA module that further reduces SWaP resulted in the development of our EOA-m ruggedized gain module product line. These ruggedized EDFAs have been used by US Military sub-contractors in airborne and space applications since 2017.