Ciena brings data analytics to optical networking

• Ciena's WaveLogic Ai coherent DSP-ASIC makes real-time measurements, enabling operators to analyse and adapt their networks.     
• The DSP-ASIC supports 100-gigabit to 400-gigabit wavelengths in 50-gigabit increments. 
• The WaveLogic Ai will be used in Ciena’s systems from 2Q 2017.  

Ciena has unveiled its latest generation coherent DSP-ASIC. The device, dubbed WaveLogic Ai, follows Ciena’s WaveLogic 3 family of coherent chips which was first announced in 2012. The Ai naming scheme reflects the company's belief that its latest chipset represents a significant advancement in coherent DSP-ASIC functionality.  

Helen XenosThe WaveLogic Ai is Ciena's first DSP-ASIC to support two baud rates, 35 gigabaud for fixed-grid optical networks and 56 gigabaud for flexible-grid ones. The design also uses advanced modulation schemes to optimise the data transmission over a given link.

Perhaps the most significant development, however, is the real-time network monitoring offered by the coherent DSP-ASIC. The data will allow operators to fine-tune transmissions to adapt to changing networking conditions. 

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Talking markets: Oclaro on 100 gigabits and beyond

Oclaro’s chief commercial officer, Adam Carter, discusses the 100-gigabit market, optical module trends, silicon photonics, and why this is a good time to be an optical component maker.

Oclaro has started its first quarter 2017 fiscal results as it ended fiscal year 2016 with another record quarter. The company reported revenues of $136 million in the quarter ending in September, 8 percent sequential growth and the company's fifth consecutive quarter of 7 percent or greater revenue growth.

Adam CarterA large part of Oclaro’s growth was due to strong demand for 100 gigabits across the company’s optical module and component portfolio.

The company has been supplying 100-gigabit client-side optics using the CFP, CFP2 and CFP4 pluggable form factors for a while. “What we saw in June was the first real production ramp of our CFP2-ACO [coherent] module,” says Adam Carter, chief commercial officer at Oclaro. “We have transferred all that manufacturing over to Asia now.”

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COBO: specification work nearing completion

The Consortium for On-board Optics (COBO) is on target to complete its specifications work by the year end. The work will then enter a final approval stage that will take up to a further three months.

On-board optics, also known as mid-board or embedded optics, have been available for years but vendors have so far had to use custom products. The goal of COBO, first announced in March 2015 and backed by such companies as Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Finisar and Intel, is to develop a technology roadmap and common specifications for on-board optics to ensure interoperability.

Brad Booth (pictured), the chair of COBO and principal architect for Microsoft’s Azure Global Networking Services, says that bringing optics inside systems raises a different set of issues compared to pluggable optical modules used on the front panel of equipment. “If you have a requirement for 32 ports on a faceplate, you know mechanically what you can build,” says Booth.

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Telefónica tackles video growth with IP-MPLS network

• Telefónica’s video growth in one year has matched nine years of IP traffic growth 

• Optical mesh network in Barcelona will use CDC-ROADMs and 200-gigabit coherent line cards 

Telefónica has started testing an optical mesh network in Barcelona, adding to its existing optical mesh deployment across Madrid. Both mesh networks are based on 200-gigabit optical channels and high-degree reconfigurable add-drop multiplexers (ROADMs) that are part of the optical infrastructure that underpins the operator’s nationwide IP-MPLS network that is now under construction.

Maria Antonia CrespoThe operator decided to become a video telco company in late 2014 to support video-on-demand and over-the-top streaming video services.

Telefónica realised its existing IP and aggregation networks would not be able to accommodate the video traffic growth and started developing its IP-MPLS network.

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The making of integrated optics

A US initiative is bringing together leading companies with top academics and universities to create a manufacturing infrastructure for the widespread adoption of integrated photonics.

The US sees integrated photonics as a strategic technology and has set up the American Institute for Manufacturing Integrated Photonics - AIM Photonics - to advance the technology and make it available to a wider community of companies. AIM Photonics, with $610 million of public and private funding, is a five-year initiative ending in 2020. AIM’s long-term goal is to be self-sustaining.

Doug Coolbaugh

“Right now the infrastructure is focussed on electronics and CMOS but photonics is going to be the future,” says Doug Coolbaugh, chief operations officer at AIM Photonics. “There is no other way to do it [very high bandwidth] except using light for ultra fast communications.”

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Silicon Photonics: Fueling the Next Information Revolution

New book to be published in December 2016

Silicon Photonics: Fueling the Next Information Revolution is the title of the book Daryl Inniss and I have just completed.

We started writing the book at the end of 2014. We felt the timing was right for a silicon photonics synthesis book that assesses the significant changes taking place in the datacom, telecom, and semiconductor industries, and explains the market opportunities that will result and the role silicon photonics will play.

Silicon photonics is coming to market at a time of momentous change. Internet content providers are driving new requirements as they scale their data centres. The chip industry is grappling with the end of Moore’s law. And the telecom community faces its own challenges as the bandwidth-carrying capacity of fiber starts to be approached.

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600-gigabit channels on a fibre by 2017

NeoPhotonics has announced an integrated coherent receiver that will enable 600-gigabit optical transmission using a single wavelength. A transmission capacity of 48 terabits over the fibre’s C-band is then possible using 80 such channels.

NeoPhotonics’ micro integrated coherent receiver operates at 64 gigabaud, twice the symbol rate of deployed 100-gigabit optical transport systems and was detailed at the recent ECOC show.

Current 100 gigabit-per-second (Gbps) coherent systems use polarisation-multiplexing, quadrature phase-shift keying (PM-QPSK) modulation operating at 32 gigabaud. “That is how you get four bits [per symbol],” says Ferris Lipscomb, vice president of marketing at NeoPhotonics.

Optical designers have two approaches to increase the data transmitted on a wavelength: they can use increasingly complex modulation schemes - such as 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (16-QAM) or 64-QAM - and they can increase the baud rate. “You double the baud rate, you double the transmission capacity,” says Lipscomb. “And using 64-QAM and 64 gigabaud, you can go to 600 gigabit per channel; of course when you do that, you reduce the reach.”

The move to the higher 64 gigabaud symbol rate will help Internet content providers increase capacity between their large-scale data centres. Typical transmission distances between sites are relatively short, up to 100km.

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