Cisco Systems' 100 Gigabit spans metro to ultra long-haul

Cisco Systems has demonstrated 100 Gigabit transmission over a 3,000km span. The coherent-based system uses a single carrier in a 50GHz channel to transmit at 100 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps). According to Cisco, no Raman amplification or signal regeneration is needed to achieve the 3,000km reach.

Feature: Beyond 100G - Part 2

"The days of a single modulation scheme on a part are probably going to come to an end in the next two to three years"

Greg Nehib, Cisco 

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Altera optical FPGA in 100 Gigabit Ethernet traffic demo

Altera is demonstrating its optical FPGA at OFC/NFOEC, being held in Los Angeles this week. The FPGA, coupled to parallel optical interfaces, is being used to send and receive 100 Gigabit Ethernet packets of various sizes. 

The technology demonstrator comprises an Altera Stratix IV FPGA with 28, 11.3Gbps electrical transceivers coupled to two Avago Technologies' MicroPod optical modules. 

"FPGAs are now being used for full system level solutions"

Kevin Cackovic, Altera

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Ciena: Changing bandwidth on the fly

Ciena has announced its latest coherent chipset that will be the foundation for its future optical transmission offerings. The chipset, dubbed WaveLogic 3, will extend the performance of its 100 Gigabit links while introducing transmission flexibility that will trade capacity with reach.

Feature: Beyond 100 Gigabit - Part 1

"We are going to be deployed, [with WaveLogic 3] running live traffic in many customers’ networks by the end of the year"

Michael Adams, Ciena

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Challenges, progress & uncertainties facing the optical component industry

In recent years the industry has moved from direct detection to coherent transmission and has alighted on a flexible ROADM architecture. The result is a new level in optical networking sophistication. OFC/NFOEC 2012 will showcase the progress in these and other areas of industry consensus as well as shining a spotlight on issues less clear.

Optical component players may be forgiven for the odd envious glance towards the semiconductor industry and its well-defined industry dynamics. 

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Photonic integration specialist OneChip tackles PON

Briefing: PON

Part 1: Monolithic integrated transceivers

OneChip Photonics is moving to volume production of PON transceivers based on its photonic integrated circuit (PIC) design. The company believes that its transceivers can achieve a 20% price advantage.

"We will be able to sell [our integrated PON transceivers] at a 20% price differential when we reach high volumes"

Andy Weirich, OneChip Photonics

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40 Gigabit Ethernet QSFPs boost port density and reach

Avago Technologies and Reflex Photonics have announced extended reach 40 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) QSFP+ transceivers.  As data centres grow in size, there is a need to link equipment over distances greater than 100m, as defined by the IEEE 40 Gigabit Ethernet standard.

"For the larger data centres being built today, reach is becoming more and more important"

I Hsing Tan, Avago

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Will LTE lead to new revenues for the operators?

The opportunities and challenges the Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard poses for mobile operators. An article for the Mobile World Congress show for the magazine Informilo, click here.