ECOC 2015 Review - Part 1

Part 1: Line side announcements

• Several companies announced components for 400 gigabit optical transmission
• NEL announced a 200 gigabit coherent DSP-ASIC
• Lumentum ramps production of its ROADM blades while extending the operating temperature of its tunable SFP+

400 gigabit

Oclaro, Teraxion and NeoPhotonics detailed their latest optical components for 400 gigabit optical transmission using coherent detection.

Oclaro and Teraxion announced 400 gigabit modulators for line-side transmission; Oclaro’s based on lithium niobate and Teraxion’s an indium phosphide one.

NeoPhotonics outlined other components that will be required for higher-speed transmission: indium phosphide-based waveguide photo-detectors for coherent receivers, and ultra-narrow line-width lasers suited for higher order modulation schemes such as dual-polarisation 16-quadrature amplitude modulation (DP-16-QAM) and DP-64-QAM.

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Finisar adds silicon photonics to its technology toolkit

• Finisar revealed its in-house silicon photonics design capability at ECOC
• The company also showed its latest ROADM technologies: a dual wavelength-selective switch and a high-resolution optical channel monitor.
• Also shown was an optical amplifier that spans 400km fibre links 

These two complementary technologies [VCSELs and silicon photonics] work well together as we think about the next-generation Ethernet applications.

Rafik Ward

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