Bell Labs on silicon photonics

Briefing: Silicon Photonics

Part 2: A system vendor's perspective

• Silicon photonics as a technology has its challenges
• Its biggest impact could be to shake up the industry's optical component supply chain
• Silicon photonics will not displace VCSELs

An interview with Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs' Martin Zirngibl, domain leader for enabling physical technologies, on the merits and potential impact of silicon photonics

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Space-division multiplexing: the final frontier

System vendors continue to trumpet their achievements in long-haul optical transmission speeds and overall data carried over fibre. 

Alcatel-Lucent announced earlier this month that France Telecom-Orange is using the industry's first 400 Gigabit link, connecting Paris and Lyon, while Infinera has detailed a trial demonstrating 8 Terabit-per-second (Tbps) of capacity over 1,175km and using 500 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) super-channels. 

"Integration always comes at the cost of crosstalk"

Peter Winzer, Bell Labs

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Alcatel-Lucent demos dual-carrier Terabit transmission

"Without [photonic] integration you are doubling up your expensive opto-electronic components which doesn't scale"

Peter Winzer, Alcatel-Lucent's Bell Labs

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Alcatel-Lucent adds networking to enhance the cloud

Alcatel-Lucent has developed an architecture that addresses the networking aspects of cloud computing. Dubbed CloudBand, the system will enable operators to deliver network-enhanced cloud services to enterprise customers. Operators can also use CloudBand to deliver their own telecom services.  

“As far as we know there is no other system that bridges the gap between the network and the cloud"

Dor Skuler, Alcatel-Lucent

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DSL: Will phantom channels become real deployments?

Alcatel-Lucent’s Bell Labs has announced it has achieved a data rate of 300 megabits-per-second (Mbps) over 400m using digital subscriber line (DSL) technology. 

Alcatel-Lucent is promoting its DSL Phantom Mode technology as a complement to fibre-to-the-x (FTTx) technology. Operators can use the technology to continue to extend services offerings to existing DSL subscribers as they roll out FTTx over the next decade or more.

But one analyst believes the technology could take years to commercialise and questions whether the announcement is not sending a wrong message to the industry by providing an alternative to fibre.

“The investment required to upgrade DSL is quite small”

Stefaan Vanhastel, Alcatel-Lucent

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OFC/NFOEC 2010: Technical paper highlights

At this year’s OFC/NFOEC, to be held on March 21-25, all the main themes driving optical networking are represented:  40 and 100Gbps transmission, coherent detection, photonic integration, and the latest in optical access such as WDM-PON.

Here is a sample of some of the noteworthy papers.

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