ECOC 2023 industry reflections - Final Part

Gazettabyte has been asking industry figures to reflect on the recent ECOC show in Glasgow. The final instalment emphasises coherent technology with contributions from Adtran, Cignal AI, Infinera, Ciena, and Acacia.

The popular Market Focus sessions at ECOC

Jörg-Peter Elbers, head of advanced technology at Adtran

The ECOC 2023 conference and show was a great event. The exhibition floor was busy and offered ample networking opportunities. In turn, the conference and the Market Focus sessions provided information on the latest technologies, products, and developments.

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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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ECOC '22 Reflections - Part 2

Gazettabyte is asking industry and academic figures for their thoughts after attending ECOC 2022, held in Basel, Switzerland. In particular, what developments and trends they noted, what they learned, and what, if anything, surprised them. 

maytikka, Shutterstock.com

In Part 2, Broadcom‘s Rajiv Pancholy, optical communications advisor, Chris Cole, LightCouting’s Vladimir Kozlov, Ciena’s Helen Xenos, and Synopsys’ Twan Korthorst share their thoughts.

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Ciena's multi-format 400G coherent QSFP-DD pluggable

Ciena showcased a working 400-gigabit Universal coherent pluggable module at the ECOC 2022 conference and exhibition in Basel, Switzerland.

Ciena is using its WaveLogic 5 Nano coherent digital signal processor (DSP) for the Universal QSFP-DD coherent pluggable module.

"We call it universal because it supports many transmission modes - interoperable and high performance; the most in the industry," says Helen Xenos, senior director of portfolio marketing at Ciena. 

A look inside Ciena's 400-gigabit Universal coherent pluggable module. TOF is the tunable optical filter. Source: Ciena

The pluggable has custom extended-performance modes and supports three industry formats: the 400ZR interoperable standard, the 400ZR+ multi-source agreement (MSA), and the OpenROADM MSA. (See tables below).

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Hyperscalers' needs drive a new class of coherent DSP

Coherent digital signal processors (DSPs) companies have supported two families of coherent chips for some time. That's because no single coherent DSP can meet all the market's requirements.

The coherent DSP used for highest-performance optical transmissions must include advanced coding techniques, forward error correction, and a high symbol rate to send as much data as possible on a single wavelength and maximise reach.

Helen Xenos at NGON & DCI World

In contrast, a DSP for coherent pluggable modules needs to be power-efficient and compact to meet the optical module's power envelope and size constraints; a 400ZR QSFP-DD and a CFP2-DCO 400ZR+ being examples.

According to Ciena, now there is a need for a third category of coherent DSP for 1.6 terabit-per-second (Tbps) and 3.2Tbps transmissions over short distances for next-generation switch routers.

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WaveLogic 5: Packing a suitcase of ideas into 7nm CMOS

• Ciena’s WaveLogic 5 coherent digital signal processor family comprises the Extreme and Nano chips
• The WaveLogic 5 Extreme maximises optical capacity and transmission reach while the Nano is targeted at compact, power-conservative applications

Advancing coherent optical transmission performance to benefit its platforms; targeting the emerging coherent pluggable market opportunity; selling modules directly, and being more vertically integrated. All these aspects were outlined by Cisco to explain its intention to buy the coherent optical transmission specialist, Acacia Communications; a deal set to be completed in the spring of 2020.      

But this also fits the strategy being pursued by Ciena with its next-generation WaveLogic 5 family of coherent DSPs.

Kim Roberts

The WaveLogic 5 continues Ciena’s tradition of issuing a coherent digital signal processor (DSP) family approximately every three years: Ciena announced the WaveLogic 3 in 2012 and the WaveLogic Ai in 2016. 

Ciena has managed to maintain its three-yearly cadence despite the increasing sophistication of each generation of coherent DSP. For example, the WaveLogic 5 Extreme will support 800 gigabits-per-wavelength, double Ciena’s WaveLogic Ai that has been shipping for nearly two years. 

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Ciena goes stackable with 8180 'white box' and 6500 RLS

Ciena has unveiled two products - the 8180 coherent networking platform and the 6500 reconfigurable line system - that target cable and cellular operators that are deploying fibre deep in their networks, closer to subscribers.

The 6500 line system is also aimed at the data centre interconnect market given how the webscale players are experiencing a near-doubling of traffic each year.

Source: Ciena

The cable industry is moving to a distributed access architecture (DAA) that brings fibre closer to the network’s edge and splits part of the functionality of the cable modem termination system (CMTS) - the remote PHY - closer to end users. The cable operators are deploying fibre to boost the data rates they can offer homes and businesses.

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