Coherent optics players target the network edge for growth

Part 1: Coherent developments

The market for optical links for reaches between 10km and 120km is emerging as a fierce battleground between proponents of coherent and direct-detection technologies. 

Interest in higher data rates such as 400 gigabits is pushing coherent-based optical transmission from its traditional long-distance berth to shorter-reach applications. “That tends to be where the growth for coherent has come from as it has migrated from long-haul to metro,” says Tom Williams, senior director of marketing at Acacia Communications, a coherent technology supplier. 

Source: Acacia Communications, Gazettabyte

Williams points to the Optical Internetworking Forum’s (OIF) ongoing work to develop a 400-gigabit link for data centre interconnect. Dubbed 400ZR, the project is specifying an interoperable coherent interface that will support dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) links for distances of at least 80km.

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Ranovus shows 200 gigabit direct detection at ECOC

Ranovus has announced it first direct-detection optical products for applications including data centre interconnect.

Saeid AramidehThe start-up has announced two products to coincide with this week’s ECOC show being held in Dusseldorf, Germany.

One product is a 200 gigabit-per-second (Gbps) dense wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) CFP2 pluggable optical module that spans distances up to 130km. Ranovus will also sell the 200Gbps transmitter and receiver optical engines that can be integrated by vendors onto a host line card. 

The dense WDM direct-detection solution from Ranovus is being positioned as a cheaper, lower-power alternative to coherent optics used for high-capacity metro and long-haul optical transport. Using such technology, service providers can link their data centre buildings distributed across a metro area. 

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QSFP28 MicroMux expands 10 & 40 Gig faceplate capacity

• ADVA Optical Networking's MicroMux aggregates lower rate 10 and 40 gigabit client signals in a pluggable QSFP28 module
• ADVA is also claiming an industry first in implementing the Open Optical Line System concept that is backed by Microsoft 

The need for terabits of capacity to link Internet content providers’ mega-scale data centres has given rise to a new class of optical transport platform, known as data centre interconnect.

Source: ADVA Optical Networking

Such platforms are designed to be power efficient, compact and support a variety of client-side signal rates spanning 10, 40 and 100 gigabit. But this poses a challenge for design engineers as the front panel of such platforms can only fit so many lower-rate client-side signals. This can lead to the aggregate data fed to the platform falling short of its full line-side transport capability.

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ADVA's 100 Terabit data centre interconnect platform

• The FSP 3000 CloudConnect comes in several configurations
• The data centre interconnect platform scales to 100 terabits of throughput
• The chassis use a thin 0.5 RU QuadFlex card with up to 400 Gig transport capacity
• The optical line system has been designed to be open and programmable

ADVA Optical Networking has unveiled its FSP 3000 CloudConnect, a data centre interconnect product designed to cater for the needs of the different data centre players. The company has developed several sized platforms to address the workloads and bandwidth needs of data centre operators such as Internet content providers, communications service providers, enterprises, cloud and colocation players.

Certain Internet content providers want to scale the performance of their computing clusters across their data centres. A cluster is a grouping of distributed computing comprising a defined number of virtual machines and processor cores (see Clusters, pods and recipes explained, bottom). Yet there are also data centre operators that only need to share limited data between their sites.

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Photonics and optics: interchangeable yet different

Why is it fibre-optics, and why is it not the semiconductor photonic amplifier? It is all to do with a systems perspective versus a device perspective. An industry debate about optics and photonics.

Many terms in telecom are used interchangeably. Terms gain credibility with use but over time things evolve. For example, people understand what is meant by the term carrier [of traffic] or operator [of a network] and even the term incumbent [operator] even though markets are now competitive and 'telephony' is no longer state-run.

"For me, optics is the equivalent of electrical, and photonics is the equivalent of electronics - LSI, VLSI chips and the like" - Mehdi Asghari

Operators - ex-incumbents or otherwise - also do more that oversee the network and now provide complex services. But of course they differ from service providers such as the over-the-top players [third-party providers delivering services over an operator's infrastructure, rather than any theatrical behaviour] or internet content providers. 

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MultiPhy eyeing 400 Gig after completing funding round

MultiPhy is developing a next-generation chip design to support 100 and 400 Gigabit direct-detection optical transmission. The start-up raised a new round of funding in 2013 but has neither disclosed the amount raised nor the backers except to say it includes venture capitalists and a 'strategic investor'. 

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OpenFlow extends its control to the optical layer

OpenFlow may be causing an industry stir as system vendors such as ADVA Optical Networking extend the protocol's reach to the optical layer, but analysts warn that it will take years before the technology benefits operators' revenues.

"We see OpenFlow as an additional solution to tackle the problem of network control"

Jörg-Peter Elbers, ADVA Optical Networking

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