ECOC 2011: Products and market trends

There were several noteworthy announcements at the European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC) held in Geneva in September. Gazettabyte spoke to Finisar, Oclaro and Opnext about their ECOC product announcements and the associated trends.

100 Gig module

Opnext announced the first 100 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) transponder at ECOC, a much anticipated industry development.

"Quite a few system vendors .... are looking at 'make-versus-buy' for the next-generation [of 100Gbps]."

Ross Saunders, Opnext

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MultiPhy boosts 100 Gig direct-detection using digital signal processing

MultiPhy has detailed its 100 Gigabit direct-detection receiver IC for use in a pluggable CFP optical module addressing the metro market. 

The MP1100Q chip is being aimed at two cost-conscious metro networking requirements: 100 Gigabit point-to-point links and dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) metro networks.

The MP1100Q as part of a 100 Gig CFP module design. Source: MultiPhy

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Optical engines bring Terabit bandwidth on a card

Avago Technologies is now delivering to customers its 120 Gigabit-per-second optical engine devices. 

Such a parallel optics design offer several advantages when used on a motherboard. It offer greater flexibility when cooling since traditional optics are normally in pluggable slots at the card edge, furthest away from the fans. Such optical engines also simplify high-speed signal routing and electromagnetic interference issues since fibre is used rather than copper traces.

Figure 1: Fourteen 120Gbps MiniPods on a board. Source: Avago Technologies

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OFC announcements and market trends

Avago Technologies, Finisar and Opnext spoke to Gazettabyte about market trends and their recent OFC/NFOEC announcements. 

More compact transceiver designs at 10, 40 and 100 Gigabit, advancements in reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer (ROADM) technology and parallel optical engine developments were all in evidence at this year’s OFC/NFOEC show held in Los Angeles in March.

“MSAs are designed by committee, and when you have a committee you throw away innovation and you throw away time-to-market”  

Victor Krutul, Avago Technologies

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Ten years gone: Optical components after the boom

Vladimir Kozlov has been covering the optical components industry as an analyst since the optical boom of 2000. Here he reflects on the industry over the last decade.

Average gross margin by industry. Source: LightCounting

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Ofidium to enter 100Gbps module market using OFDM

Briefing: High-speed optical transmission.

Part 1: The start-up

Ofidium is a 100 Gigabit start-up that refuses to follow the herd.

While the optical industry has chosen polarisation-multiplexing quadrature phase-shift keying (PM-QPSK) for 100 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) transmission, the Australian start-up is developing a module based on orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation.

 "For data rates higher than 100Gbps, it [OFDM] is the only way to go"

Jonathan Lacey, CEO

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Why optical transceiver vendors are like discus-throwers

 

Guest blog on Lightwave magazine, click here.