The OIF’s 400ZR coherent interface starts to take shape

Part 2: Coherent developments

The Optical Internetworking Forum’s (OIF) group tasked with developing two styles of 400-gigabit coherent interface is now concentrating its efforts on one of the two.

When first announced last November, the 400ZR project planned to define a dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) 400-gigabit interface and a single wavelength one. Now the work is concentrating on the DWDM interface, with the single-channel interface deemed secondary. 

Karl Gass"It [the single channel] appears to be a very small percentage of what the fielded units would be,” says Karl Gass of Qorvo and the OIF Physical and Link Layer working group vice chair, optical, the group responsible for the 400ZR work.

The likelihood is that the resulting optical module will serve both applications. “Realistically, probably both [interfaces] will use a tunable laser because the goal is to have the same hardware,” says Gass.   

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ECOC reflections: final part

Gazettabyte asked several attendees at the recent ECOC show, held in Cannes, to comment on key developments and trends they noted, as well as the issues they will track in the coming year. 

Dr. Ioannis Tomkos, Fellow of OSA & Fellow of IET, Athens Information Technology Center (AIT)

With ECOC 2014 celebrating its 40th anniversary, the technical programme committee did its best to mark the occasion. For example, at the anniversary symposium, notable speakers presented the history of optical communications. Actual breakthroughs discussed during the conference sessions were limited, however.

Ioannis Tomkos

It appears that after 2008 to 2012, a period of significant advancements, the industry is now more mainstream, and significant shifts in technologies are limited. It is clear that the original focus four decades ago on novel photonics technologies is long gone. Instead, there is more and more of a focus on high-speed electronics, signal processing algorithms, and networking. These have little to do with photonics even if they greatly improve the overall efficient operation of optical communication systems and networks.

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