Infinera’s ICE6 sends 800 gigabits over a 950km link

Infinera has demonstrated the coherent transmission of an 800-gigabit signal across a 950km span of an operational network.

Robert ShoreInfinera used its Infinite Capacity Engine 6 (ICE6), comprising an indium-phosphide photonic integrated circuit (PIC) and its FlexCoherent 6 coherent digital signal processor (DSP). 

The ICE6 supports 1.6 terabits of traffic: two channels, each supporting up to 800-gigabit of data. 

The trial, conducted over an unnamed operator’s network in North America, sent the 800-gigabit signal as an alien wavelength over a third-party line-system carrying live traffic.

“We have proved not only the state of our 800-gigabit with ICE6 but also the distances it can achieve,” says Robert Shore, senior vice president of marketing at Infinera.

800G trials

Several systems vendors have undertaken 800-gigabit optical trials. 

Ciena detailed two demonstrations using its WaveLogic 5 Extreme (WL5e). One was an interoperability trial involving Verizon and Juniper Networks while the second connected two data centres belonging to the operator, Southern Cross Cable, to confirm the deployment of the WL5e cards in a live network environment.

Neither Ciena trial was designed to demonstrated WL5e’s limit of optical performance. Accordingly, no distances were quoted although both links were sub-100km, according to Ciena. 

Meanwhile, Huawei has trialled its 800-gigabit technology in the networks of operators Turkcell and China Mobile. 

The motivation for vendors to increase the speed of line-side optical transceivers is to reduce the cost of data transport. “One laser generating more data,” says Shore. “But it is not just high-speed transmissions, it is high-speed transmissions over distance.” 

Infinera’s first 800-gigabit demonstration involved the ICE6 sending the signal over 800km of Corning’s TXF low-loss fibre.

“We did the demo on that fibre and we realised we had a ton of margin left over after completing the 800-gigabit circuit,” says Shore. The company then looked for a suitable network trial using standard optical fibre.

Infinera used a third-party’s optical line system to highlight that the 950km reach wasn’t due to a combination of the ICE6 module and the company's own line system. 

“What we have shown is that you can take any link anywhere, use anyone’s line system, carrying any kind of traffic, drop in the ICE6 and get 800-gigabit connections over 950km,” says Shore.

ICE 6 

Infinera attributes the ICE6’s optical performance to its advanced coherent toolkit and the fact that the company has both photonics and coherent DSP technology, enabling their co-design to optimise the system’s performance.

One toolkit technique is Nyquist sub-carriers. Here, data is sent using several Nyquist sub-carriers across the channel instead of modulating the data onto a single carrier. The ICE6 is Infinera’s second-generation design to use sub-carriers, the first being ICE4, that doubles the number from four to eight. 

The benefit of using sub-carriers is that high data rates can be achieved while the baud rate used for each one is much lower. And a lower baud rate is more tolerant to non-linear channel impairments during optical transmission. 

Sub-carriers also improve spectral efficiency as the channels have sharper edges and can be packed tightly.

Infinera applies probabilistic constellation shaping to each sub-carrier, allowing fine-tuning of the data each carries. As a result, more data can be sent on the inner sub-carriers and less on the outer two outer sub-carrier where signal recovering is harder.  

The sweet spot for sub-carriers is a symbol rate of 8-11 gigabaud (GBd). For the Infinera trial, eight sub-carriers were used, each at 12GBd, for an overall symbol rate of 96GBd. 

“While it is best to stay as close to  8-11GBd, the coding gain you get as you go from 11GBd to 12GBd per sub-carrier is greater than the increased non-linear penalties,” says Shore.

Another feature of the coherent DSP is its use of soft-decision forward-error correction (SD-FEC) gain sharing. By sharing the FEC codes, processing resources can be shifted to one of the PIC’s two optical channels that needs it the most. 

The result is that some of the strength of the stronger signal can be traded to bolster the weaker one, extending its reach or potentially allowing a higher modulation scheme to be used.

Applications

Linking data centres is one application where the ICE6 will be used. Another is sub-sea optical transmission involving spans that can be thousands of kilometres long, requiring lower modulation schemes and lower data rates. 

“It’s not just cost-per-bit and power-per-bit, it is also spectral efficiency,” says Shore. “And a higher-performing optical signal can maintain a higher modulation rate over longer distances as well.” 

Infinera says that at 600 gigabits-per-second (Gbps), link distances will be “significantly better” than 1,600km. The company is exploring suitable links to quantify ICE6’s reach at 600Gbps. 

The ICE6 is packaged in a 5x7-inch optical module. Infinera’s Groove series will first adopt the ICE6 followed by the XTC platforms, part of the DTN-X series. First network deployments will occur in the second half of this year.

Infinera is also selling the ICE6 5x7-inch module to interested parties.  

XR Optics 

Infinera is not addressing the 400ZR coherent pluggable module market. The 400ZR is the OIF-defined 400-gigabit coherent standard developed to connect equipment in data centres up to 120km apart.  

Infinera is, however, eyeing the emerging ZR+ opportunity using XR Optics. ZR+ is not a standard but it extends the features of 400ZR.

XR Optics is the brainchild of Infinera that is based on coherent sub-carriers. All the sub-carriers can be sent to the same destination for point-to-point links, but they can also be sent to different locations to allow for point-to-multipoint communications. Such an arrangement allows for traffic aggregation. 

“You can steer all the sub-carriers coming out of an XR transceiver to the same destination to get a 400-gigabit point-to-point link to compete with ZR+,” says Shore. “And because we are using sub-carriers instead of a single carrier, we expect to get significantly better performance.”

Infinera is developing the coherent DSPs for XR Optics and has teamed up with optical module makers, Lumentum and II-VI. 

Other unnamed partners have joined Infinera to bring the technology to market. Shore says that the partners include network operators that have contributed to the technology’s development.  

Infinera planned to showcase XR Optics at the OFC conference and exhibition held recently in San Diego. 

Shore says to expect XR Optics announcements in late summer, from Infinera and perhaps others. These will detail the XR Optics form factors and how they function as well as the products’ schedules.