BT makes plans for continued traffic growth in its core

Briefing: DWDM developments

Part 1

Kevin Smith: “A lot of the work we are doing with the trials have demonstrated we can scale our networks gracefully rather than there being a brick wall of a problem.”

BT is confident that its core network will accommodate the expected IP traffic growth over the next decade. Traffic in BT’s core is growing at between 35 and 40 percent annually, compared to the global average growth rate of 20 to 30 percent. BT attributes its higher growth to the rollout of fibre-based broadband across the UK.

The telco is deploying 100-gigabit wavelengths in high-traffic areas of its network. “These are key sites where we're running out of wavelengths such that we need to implement higher-speed ones,” says Kevin Smith, research leader for BT’s transport networks. The operator is now trialling 200-gigabit wavelengths using polarisation multiplexing, 16-quadrature amplitude modulation (PM-16QAM).

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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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ClariPhy samples a 200 Gigabit coherent DSP-ASIC

ClariPhy Communications has entered the 100 Gigabit coherent merchant chip market after announcing first samples of its LightSpeed-II devices. 

The family of coherent digital signal processing ASICs (DSP-ASICs) is manufactured using a 28nm CMOS process. "We believe it is the first 28nm standard product, and leaps ahead of the current generation [DSP-ASIC] devices," says Paul Voois, co-founder and chief strategy officer at ClariPhy.

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OFC/NFOEC 2013 industry reflections - Final part

Gazettabyte spoke with Jörg-Peter Elbers, vice president, advanced technology at ADVA Optical Networking about the state of the optical industry following the recent OFC/NFOEC exhibition. 

"There were many people in the OFC workshops talking about getting rid of pluggability and the cages and getting the stuff mounted on the printed circuit board instead, as a cheaper, more scalable approach"

Jörg-Peter Elbers, ADVA Optical Networking

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OFC/NFOEC 2013 product round-up - Part 2

 Second and final part

• Custom add/drop integrated platform and a dual 1x20 WSS module
• Coherent receiver with integrated variable optical attenuator
• 100/200 Gigabit coherent CFP and 100 Gigabit CFP2 roadmaps     
• Mid-board parallel optics - from 150 to over 600 Gigabit.
• 10 Gigabit EPON triplexer 

Add/drop platform and wavelength-selective switches

Oclaro announced an add/drop routing platform for next-generation reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers (ROADMs). The platform, which supports colourless, directionless, contentionless (CDC) and flexible grid ROADMs, can be tailored to a system vendor's requirements and includes such functions as cross-connect switching, arrayed amplifiers and optical channel monitors.

"If we make the whole thing [add/drop platform], we can integrate in a much better way"

Per Hansen, Oclaro

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OFC/NFOEC 2013 industry reflections - Part 3

Joe Berthold, vice president of network architecture, Ciena

The two topics that received the most attention, judging from session attendance and discussion in the hallways, were silicon photonics and software-defined networking (SDN). I predict that next year those who wish to capitalise on this popularity wave will be submitting papers on SDN-enabled silicon photonics.

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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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