OFC 2024 industry reflections

Gazettabyte is asking industry figures for their thoughts after attending the recent OFC show in San Diego. In particular, what developments and trends they noted, what they learned and what, if anything, surprised them. Here are the first responses from Huawei, Drut Technologies and Aloe Semiconductor.

Maxim Kuschnerov, Director R&D, Optical & Quantum Communication Laboratory at Huawei.

Some ten years ago datacom took the helm of the optical transceiver market from legacy telecom operators to command a much larger volume of short-reach optics and extend its vision into dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM).

At OFC, the industry witnessed another passing-of-the-torch moment as Nvidia took over the dominant position in the optics market where AI compute is driving optical communication. The old guard of Google is now following while others are closely watching.

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The OIF's coherent optics work gets a ZR+ rating

The OIF has started work on a 1600ZR+ standard to enable the sending of 1.6 terabits of data across hundreds of kilometres of optical fibre. 

The initiative follows the OIF's announcement last September that it had kicked off 1600ZR. ZR refers to an extended reach standard, sending 1.6 terabits over an 80-120km point-to-point link. 

1600ZR follows the OIF's previous work standardising the 400-gigabit 400ZR and the 800-gigabit 800ZR coherent pluggable optics.      

The decision to address a 'ZR+' standard is a first for the OIF. Until now, only the OpenZR+ Multi-Source Agreement (MSA) and the OpenROADM MSA developed interoperable ZR+ optics.

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ECOC 2023 industry reflections

Gazettabyte is asking industry figures for their thoughts after attending the recent ECOC show in Glasgow. In particular, what developments and trends they noted, what they learned and what, if anything, surprised them. Here are the first responses from BT, Huawei, and Teramount. 

Andrew Lord, Senior Manager, Optical Networks and Quantum Research at BT

I was hugely privileged to be the Technical Co-Chair of ECOC in Glasgow, Scotland and have been working on the event for over a year. The overriding impression was that the industry is fully functioning again, post-covid, with a bumper crop of submitted papers and a full exhibition. Chairing the conference left little time to indulge in content. I will need to do my regular ECOC using the playback option. But specific themes struck me as interesting.

There were solid sessions and papers around free space optics, including satellite. The activities here are more intense than we would typically see at ECOC. This reflects a growing interest and the specific expertise within the Scottish research community. Similarly, more quantum-related papers demonstrated how quantum is integrating into the mainstream optical industry.

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ECOC 2022 Reflections - Part 1

Gazettabyte is asking industry and academic figures for their thoughts after attending ECOC 2022, held in Basel, Switzerland. In particular, what developments and trends they noted, what they learned, and what, if anything, surprised them.

In Part 1, Infinera's David Welch, Cignal AI's Scott Wilkinson, University of Cambridge's Professor Seb Savory, and Huawei's Maxim Kuschnerov share their thoughts.

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Huawei sets transmission record with new modulator

Coherent discourse: Part 1

A paper from Huawei and Sun Yat-Sen University in the January issue of the Optica journal describes a thin-film lithium niobate modulator. The modulator enabled a world-record coherent optical transmission, sending nearly 2 terabits of data over a single wavelength.

Maxim Kuschnerov

Much of the industry’s focus in recent years has been to fit coherent optical technology within a pluggable module.

Such pluggables allow 400-gigabit coherent interfaces to be added to IP routers and switches, serving the needs of the data centre operators and telecom operators.

But research labs of the leading optical transport vendors continue to advance high-end coherent systems beyond 800-gigabit-per-wavelength transmissions.

Optical transport systems from Ciena, Infinera and Huawei can send 800-gigabit wavelengths using a symbol rate of 96-100 gigabaud (GBd).

Acacia Communications, part of Cisco, detailed late last year the first 1.2-terabit single-wavelength coherent pluggable transceiver that will operate at 140GBd, twice the symbol rate of 400-gigabit modules such as 400ZR. 

Now Huawei has demonstrated in the lab a thin-film lithium niobate modulator that supports a symbol rate of 220GBd and beyond.

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Books read in 2021: Part 1

Each year Gazettabyte asks industry figures to pick their reads of the year. Paul Brooks and Maxim Kuschnerov kick off this year's recommended reads. 

Dr. Paul Brooks, Optical Transport Director, VIAVI Solutions

Having spent a very happy time serving in the Royal Navy, I am always reading about all things connected with its history.

As a young midshipman, I managed to sleep through many of the history lessons at BRNC Dartmouth so I am using my spare time to catch up on the lessons I missed all those years ago.

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Infinera’s ICE6 sends 800 gigabits over a 950km link

Infinera has demonstrated the coherent transmission of an 800-gigabit signal across a 950km span of an operational network.

Robert ShoreInfinera used its Infinite Capacity Engine 6 (ICE6), comprising an indium-phosphide photonic integrated circuit (PIC) and its FlexCoherent 6 coherent digital signal processor (DSP). 

The ICE6 supports 1.6 terabits of traffic: two channels, each supporting up to 800-gigabit of data. 

The trial, conducted over an unnamed operator’s network in North America, sent the 800-gigabit signal as an alien wavelength over a third-party line-system carrying live traffic.

“We have proved not only the state of our 800-gigabit with ICE6 but also the distances it can achieve,” says Robert Shore, senior vice president of marketing at Infinera.

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