OFC/NFOEC 2010: Industry reflections

Gazettabyte asked the views of several attendees at OFC/NFOEC 2010 to reflect on the show. In particular what developments or trends struck them as noteworthy, what they learnt and what gives them reason for optimism?

Here is a selection of their views.

“We heard again and again, that the internet service providers such as Google are still looking for solutions for their future bandwidth demand”

Andreas Umbach, u2t Photonics

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Ofidium to enter 100Gbps module market using OFDM

Briefing: High-speed optical transmission.

Part 1: The start-up

Ofidium is a 100 Gigabit start-up that refuses to follow the herd.

While the optical industry has chosen polarisation-multiplexing quadrature phase-shift keying (PM-QPSK) for 100 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) transmission, the Australian start-up is developing a module based on orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation.

 "For data rates higher than 100Gbps, it [OFDM] is the only way to go"

Jonathan Lacey, CEO

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Mobile broadband: congestion is inevitable

Shown is a table listing the typical bandwidth requirements for various applications.

The table is taken from a recent report by Peter Rysavy of Rysavy Research, entitled Mobile Broadband Capacity Constraints And the Need for Optimization.

The report looks at the huge growth in mobile broadband services and the resulting congestion. The report includes a nice model showing how only a few intensive users can consume much of a cell's capacity. The report also discusses how operators must continue to add wireless capacity while being a lot smarter in the bandwidth consumed by applications.

To see a copy of the report, click here

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OFC/NFOEC 2010: Announcements round-up

A brief review of some of the eye-catching announcements emerging from this year’s OFC/NFOEC being held in San Diego this week.

The Infinera Express: Infinera's 80-foot-long truck-based mobile demo unit, is at OFC/NFOEC. Infinera is part of a demo of live 100 GigE data traffic with Juniper Networks, Finisar, Opnext and Reflex Photonics. The truck also contains Infinera’s ATN metro edge platform.

Demonstrations and displays

The Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) is displaying components and hardware as part of its integrated transmitter and receiver initiative for 100Gbps transponders.

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Opnext's multiplexer IC plays its part in 100Gbps trial

AT&T’s 100 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) coherent trial between Louisiana and Florida detailed earlier this week was notable for several reasons. It included a mix of 10, 40 and 100Gbps wavelengths, Cisco Systems' newest IP core router, the CRS-3, and a 100Gbps line-side design from Opnext.

 

According to Andrew Schmitt, directing analyst of optical at Infonetics Research, what is significant about the 100Gbps AT&T trial is the real-time transmission; unlike previous 100Gbps trials no received data was block-captured and decoded offline.

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Verizon plans coherent-optimised routes

Glenn Wellbrock, director of backbone network design at Verizon Business, was interviewed by gazettabyte as part of an upcoming feature on high-speed optical transmission.  Here are some highlights of what he shared. The topics will be expanded upon in the upcoming feature.

 "Next-gen lines will be coherent only"

 Glenn Wellbrock, Verizon Business

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OFC/NFOEC 2010: Technical paper highlights

At this year’s OFC/NFOEC, to be held on March 21-25, all the main themes driving optical networking are represented:  40 and 100Gbps transmission, coherent detection, photonic integration, and the latest in optical access such as WDM-PON.

Here is a sample of some of the noteworthy papers.

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