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Wednesday, March 26, 2014 at 10:34AM Part 1: Line-side technologies
Technologies for 100 Gigabit were prominent at this year's OFC conference and exhibition held in San Francisco earlier this month.
Wednesday, March 19, 2014 at 3:49PM Ciena has enhanced its control plane and line elements to enable software to control the optical networking layer. The additions are part of Ciena's OPn network architecture evolution to enable greater visibility and automation. "It is about putting software into a system to allow you to program the photonic line," says Michael Adams, vice president of product & technology marketing at Ciena.
"For an SDN controller to control a photonic line, we need to present it as a programmable layer. The infrastructure is now there to be programmed."
Michael Adams, Ciena
Tuesday, March 18, 2014 at 10:18AM Acacia Communications has revealed the innards of its 100 Gig coherent pluggable module for metro networks. The AC-100 CFP combines a low-power DSP-ASIC with a silicon-photonics-based optics chip. The CFP's reach is 80km to 1,200km, and its power consumption is 24-26W, well within the pluggable's maximum power profile of 32W.
The power consumption of the AC-100 CFP, and its main components, and the target power consumptions of the components needed for a digital CFP2. Source: Gazettabyte
Friday, March 14, 2014 at 9:45AM Infinera has unveiled a flexible grid, reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer (ROADM) to complement its DTN-X optical networking platform.
An example showing the impact of a 500G super-channel ROADM node. Source: Infinera
"The FlexROADM will open up the Tier-1 operators in a way Infinera has not been able to do before," says Dana Cooperson, vice president, network infrastructure at market research firm, Ovum. "The DTN-X was necessary but not sufficient; the ROADM is the last piece."
Thursday, March 13, 2014 at 7:38AM The growing sophistication of high-speed optical transmission based on 100 Gigabit-plus lightpaths and advanced ROADMs is rekindling interest in amplifier design.
Raman is a signature of the spread of 100 Gig but also the desire of being upgradable to higher bit rates
Per Hansen, II-VI
For the last decade, amplifier designers have been tasked with reducing the cost of Erbium-doped fibre amplifiers (EDFAs). "Now there is a need for new solutions that are more expensive," says Daryl Inniss, vice president and practice leader, components at market research firm, Ovum. "It is no longer just cost-cutting."
Monday, March 10, 2014 at 8:12AM Do company partnerships work? Ericsson and Ciena certainly think so, and provide a compelling argument for their collaboration in the areas of IP-over-WDM and software-defined networking (SDN). More such partnerships should also be expected.
Jan Häglund
Ericsson and Ciena have signed a global strategic agreement that provides Ericsson with Ciena's optical networking technology, while Ciena benefits from Ericsson's broader service provider relationships.
Wednesday, March 5, 2014 at 9:49AM ClariPhy Communications has entered the 100 Gigabit coherent merchant chip market after announcing first samples of its LightSpeed-II devices.
The family of coherent digital signal processing ASICs (DSP-ASICs) is manufactured using a 28nm CMOS process. "We believe it is the first 28nm standard product, and leaps ahead of the current generation [DSP-ASIC] devices," says Paul Voois, co-founder and chief strategy officer at ClariPhy.
