OFC 2024 industry reflections: Part 4

Gazettabyte is asking industry figures for their thoughts after attending the recent OFC show in San Diego. This penultimate part includes the thoughts of Cisco’s Ron Horan, Coherent’s Dr. Sanjai Parthasarathi, and Adtran’s Jörg-Peter Elbers.

Ron Horan, Vice President Product Management, Client Optics Group, Cisco   

Several years ago, no one could have predicted how extensive the network infrastructure required to support artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) back-end networks in data centres would be. This year's OFC answered that question. In a word, immense.

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A coherent roadmap for co-packaged optics

Is coherent optics how co-packaged will continue to scale? Pilot Photonics certainly thinks so.

Part 1: Co-packaged optics 

Frank Smyth

Frank Smyth, CTO and founder of Pilot Photonics, believes the firm is at an important inflection point. 

Known for its comb laser technology, Pilot Photonics has just been awarded a €2.5 million European Innovation Council grant to develop its light-source technology for co-packaged optics. 

The Irish start-up is also moving to much larger premises and is on a recruitment drive. “Many of our projects and technologies are maturing,” says Smyth. 

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OFC 2024 reflects a mature industry with new offshoots

• The three General Chairs preview the upcoming Optical Fiber Communications (OFC) conference and discuss photonics developments and trends.
• The General Chairs' role is to choose the plenary speakers, programme theme, and conference schedule.
• OFC takes place during March 24th-28th in San Diego, CA.*

Photonics, at least for traditional applications, has become a mature industry. So says Professor Dimitra Simeonidou, one of this year's OFC General Chairs.

Professor Dimitra Simeonidou

By traditional, Simeonidou is referring to classical optical communications.

But she also stresses new developments: the use of optical fibres for environmental sensing, optics for satellites, and quantum.

"Quantum is like a micro-OFC," says Simeonidou. "You have issues from technology to subsystem to system applications now appearing in the OFC programmes."

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Working at the limit of optical transmission performance

• Expect to see new optical transmission records at the upcoming ECOC 2023 conference. 
• Keysight Technologies' chart plots the record-setting optical transmission systems of recent years.
• The chart reveals optical transmission performance issues and the importance of the high-speed converters between the analogue and digital domains for test equipment and, by implication, for coherent digital signal processors (DSPs).

Graphic explanation

Shown is the net bit rate plotted against the baud rate. Also shown are lines with the number of bits per symbol. These are not the bit resolution of the DAC but the bits for both polarisations. For example, 14bit/symbol refers to 7-bit per polarisation. The DACs making up the transmission systems plotted are either 6-bit or 8-bit. Source: Keysight

Engineers keep advancing optical systems to send more data across an optical fibre.

It requires advances in optical and electronic components that can process faster, higher-bandwidth signals, and that includes the most essential electronics part of all: the coherent DSP chip. 

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Ciena advances coherent technology on multiple fronts

• Ciena has unveiled the industry’s first coherent digital signal processor (DSP) to support 1.6-terabit wavelengths
• Ciena announced two WaveLogic 6 coherent DSPs: Extreme and Nano
• WaveLogic 6 Extreme operates at a symbol rate of up to 200 gigabaud (GBd) while the Nano, aimed at coherent pluggables, has a baud rate from 118-140GBd

Part 1: WaveLogic 6 coherent DSPs

Helen Xenos

Ciena has leapfrogged the competition by announcing the industry’s first coherent DSP operating at up to 200GBd.

The WaveLogic 6 chips are the first announced coherent DSPs implemented using a 3nm CMOS process.

Ciena’s competitors are - or will soon be - shipping 5nm CMOS coherent DSPs. In contrast, Ciena has chosen to skip 5nm and will ship WaveLogic 6 Extreme coherent modems in the first half of 2024.

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How to shepherd a company’s technologies for growth

CTO interviews part 3: Dr Julie Eng

• Eng is four months into her new role as CTO of Coherent.
• Previously, she headed Finisar’s transceiver business and then the 3D sensing business, first at Finisar and then at II-VI. II-VI changed its name to Coherent in September 2022
• “CTO is one of these roles that has no universal definition,” says Eng

Dr Julie Eng

Julie Eng loved her previous role.

She had been heading II-VI’s (now Coherent’s) 3D sensing unit after being VP of engineering at Finisar’s transceiver business. II-VI bought Finisar in 2019.

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Lumentum’s CTO discusses photonic trends

CTO interviews part 2: Brandon Collings

• The importance of moving to parallel channels will only increase given the continual growth in bandwidth.
• Lumentum's integration of NeoPhotonics’ engineers and products has been completed.
• The use of coherent techniques continues to grow, which is why Lumentum acquired the telecom transmission product lines and staff of IPG Photonics.

Brandon Collings has been a CTO for over 13 years; first as CTO of the commercial optical products (CCOP) business within JDSU and then CTO of Lumentum when it spun out in 2015. In that time, the scope of his work has continued to grow.

Brandon Collings

"It has changed quite significantly given what Lumentum is engaging in," he says. "My role spans the entire company; I'm engaged in a lot of areas well beyond communications."

A decade ago, the main focus was telecom and datacom. Now Lumentum also addresses commercial lasers, 3D sensing, and, increasingly, automotive lidar.

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