The long game: Acacia's coherent vision

In 2007, Christian Rasmussen made a career-defining gamble. After attending a conference featuring presentations on coherent optical transmission, he returned home, consulted his family, and quit his job at Mintera, then an optical networking equipment maker.

Christian Rasmussen

The technology he'd seen discussed promised to solve the transmission impairments associated with direct-detection-based optical transmission – chromatic dispersion and polarisation mode dispersion - that had stymied optical transport to go beyond 40 gigabits-per-second (Gbps).

"We came back and were completely excited that there was a technology that addressed all the problems that we had experienced firsthand," says Rasmussen, now Chief Technology Officer at Acacia.

His bet paid off. Acacia which he helped co-found in 2009, had a successful IPO in 2016 and would later be acquired by Cisco Systems for $4.5 billion in 2021.

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Ribbon offers for trial its 1.2T wavelength 9408 platform

Ribbon Communications has started working with operators to trial its latest Apollo 9408 optical transport platform that supports 1.2 terabits per second (Tbps) optical wavelengths.

The company's modular platform also can send 800 gigabit-per-second (Gbps) wavelengths over 1,000km and 400Gbps wavelengths over ultra-long-haul networks.

Jonathan Homa

"We have conducted trials, including one with a Tier 1 European provider," says Jonathan Homa, senior director of solutions marketing at Ribbon. "You can get 1.2 terabits within major cities, 800 gigabits covering major states or regions, and 400 gigabits for about as long as you want to go."

"The Apollo 9408 is Ribbon's first disaggregated transponder unit or compact modular box using the CIM 8 for up to 1.2Tbps of wavelength speed," says Jimmy Yu, vice president at market research firm Dell'Oro Group.

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OFC highlights a burgeoning coherent pluggable market

A trend evident at the OFC show earlier this month was the growing variety of coherent pluggable modules on display.

Whereas a coherent module maker would offer a product based on a coherent digital signal processor (DSP) and a basic design and then add a few minor tweaks, now the variety of modules offered reflects the growing needs of the network operators.

Tom WilliamsAcacia, part of Cisco, announced two coherent pluggable to coincide with OFC.

The Bright 400ZR+ QSFP-DD pluggable form factor is based on Acacia’s existing 400ZR+ offering. It has a higher transmit power of up to 5dBm and includes a tunable filter to improve the optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) performance.

Acacia’s second coherent module is the fixed wavelength 400-gigabit 400G ER1 module designed for point-to-point applications.

“I can understand it being a little bit confusing,” says Tom Williams, vice president of marketing at Acacia. “We have maybe five or six configurations of modules based on the same underlying DSP and optical technology.”

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