Europe's first glimpse of a live US baseball game

It is rare to visit a museum dedicated to telecoms, never mind one set in beautiful grounds. Nor does it often happen that the visit coincides with an important anniversary for the site.

La Cité des Télécoms, a museum set in 11 hectares of land in Pleumeur-Bodou, Brittany, France, is where the first TV live feed was sent by satellite from the US to Europe.

The Radôme protecting the vast horn antenna

The Telstar 1 communications satellite was launched 60 years ago, on July 10, 1962. The first transmission that included part of a live Chicago baseball game almost immediately followed.

By then, a vast horn radio antenna had been constructed and was awaiting the satellite's first signals. The Radôme houses the antenna, an inflated dome-shaped skin to protect it from the weather. The antenna is built using 276 tonnes of steel and sits on 4,000 m³ of concrete. Just the bolts holding together the structure weigh 10 tonnes. It is also the largest inflated unsupported dome in the world. 

The antenna continued to receive satellite transmissions till 1985. The location was then classed as a site of national historical importance. The huge horn antenna is unique since the twin antenna in the US has been dismantled.  

The Cité des Télécoms museum was opened in 1991 and the site is a corporate foundation supported by Orange. 

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Hyperscalers' needs drive a new class of coherent DSP

Coherent digital signal processors (DSPs) companies have supported two families of coherent chips for some time. That's because no single coherent DSP can meet all the market's requirements.

The coherent DSP used for highest-performance optical transmissions must include advanced coding techniques, forward error correction, and a high symbol rate to send as much data as possible on a single wavelength and maximise reach.

Helen Xenos at NGON & DCI World

In contrast, a DSP for coherent pluggable modules needs to be power-efficient and compact to meet the optical module's power envelope and size constraints; a 400ZR QSFP-DD and a CFP2-DCO 400ZR+ being examples.

According to Ciena, now there is a need for a third category of coherent DSP for 1.6 terabit-per-second (Tbps) and 3.2Tbps transmissions over short distances for next-generation switch routers.

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Changing the radio access network for good

The industry initiative to open up the radio access network, known as open RAN, is changing how the mobile network is architected and is proving its detractors wrong.

So says a recent open RAN study by market research company, LightCounting.

Stéphane Téral

"The virtual RAN and open RAN sceptics are wrong," says Stéphane Téral, chief analyst at LightCounting.

Japan's mobile operators, Rakuten Mobile and NTT Docomo, lead the world with large-scale open RAN deployments.

Meanwhile, many leading communications service providers (CSPs) continue to trial the technology with substantial deployments planned around 2024-25.

Japan's fourth and newest mobile network operator, Rakuten Mobile, deployed 40,000 open RAN sites with 200,000 radio units by the start of 2022.

Meanwhile, NTT Docomo, Japan's largest mobile operator, deployed 10,000 sites in 2021 and will deploy another 10,000 this year.

NTT Docomo has shown that open RAN also benefits incumbent operators, not just new mobile entrants like Rakuten Mobile and Dish Networks in the US that can embrace the latest technologies as they roll out their networks.

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OpenLight's integrated-laser silicon photonics platform

• OpenLight is an independent silicon photonics company backed by Synopsys and Juniper Networks 
• The company was created by carving out the silicon photonics arm of Juniper
• The establishment of OpenLight and its open platform highlights the growing maturity of silicon photonics as new applications emerge beyond datacom and telecom

Thomas Mader, OpenLight

OpenLight is coming to market with an open silicon photonics platform that includes integrated lasers and gain blocks.

Juniper has a long relationship with Synopsys, using its electronic-photonic design automation (EPDA) tools.

So when Juniper said it was spinning out its silicon photonics group, Synopsys was keen to partner.

The result is OpenLight, of which Synopsys has a 75 per cent stake costing $67.5 million.

Thomas Mader, OpenLight's chief operating officer and formerly head of Juniper's silicon photonics unit, says OpenLight is the first company to offer an open platform that includes monolithically integrated lasers, optical amplifiers and modulators. 

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Intel adds multi-channel lasers to its silicon photonics toolbox

Intel has developed an 8-lane parallel-wavelength laser array to tackle the growing challenge of feeding data to integrated circuits (ICs). 

Haisheng Rong

Optical input-output (I/O) promises to solve the challenge of getting data into and out of high-end silicon devices. 

These ICs include Ethernet switch chips and 'XPUs', shorthand for processors (CPUs), graphics processing units (GPUs) and data processor units (DPUs).

The laser array is Intel's latest addition to its library of silicon photonics devices. 

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Marvell plans for CXL's introduction in the data centre

The open interconnect Compute Express Link (CXL) standard promises to change how data centre computing is architected.

CXL enables the rearrangement of processors (CPUs), accelerator chips, and memory within computer servers to boost efficiency.

Thad Omura

"CXL is such an important technology that is in high focus today by all the major cloud hyperscalers and system OEMs," says Thad Omura, vice president of flash marketing at Marvell. 

Semiconductor firm Marvell has strengthened its CXL expertise by acquiring Tanzanite Silicon Solutions. 

Tanzanite was the first company to show two CPUs sharing common memory using a CXL 2.0 controller implemented using a field-programmable gate array (FPGA). 

Marvell intends to use CXL across its portfolio of products.

Terms of the deal for the 40-staff Tanzanite acquisition have not been disclosed. 

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ADVA and II-VI’s coherent partnership

• ADVA and II-VI have jointly developed a 100-gigabit coherent DSP
• Both companies plan to use the 2.0-2.5W, 7nm CMOS Steelerton DSP for a 100 ZR QSFP28 module
• II-VI’s ASIC design team engineered the DSP while ADVA developed the silicon photonics-based optics. 

ADVA and II-VI have joined forces to define a tiny coherent digital signal processor (DSP) that fits inside a QSFP28 optical module.

Christoph Glingener

The Steelerton DSP can send a 100-gigabit dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) transmission over 80-120km, carrying wireless backhaul and access traffic.

“It is backhaul of broadband, it is backhaul of mobile, and it definitely moves outdoors,” says Christoph Glingener, CTO at ADVA.

The module also serves metro networks with its 300km reach using optical amplification.

II-VI and ADVA now join such established coherent players as Ciena, Huawei, Infinera, Nokia as well as Marvell, NEL, and Acacia, now part of Cisco.

Effect Photonics announced at OFC earlier this year its coherent market entry with its acquisition of the Viasat DSP team. 

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