OPTICAL COMMUNICATIONS
maintaining the quality and reliability of data transmission. For network operators there is the worry that upgrading existing network infrastructures to support these higher data rates would require significant investments in both hardware and network management equipment.
The rise of terabit coherent DSPs A great deal of work has been undertaken in the past few years to provide solutions that can help operators overcome these challenges, and the most recent terabit coherent solutions have been heralded as designed with the operators in mind. One early announcement in this area came from Nokia, with its sixth-generation coherent photonic service engine, the PSE- 6s, which is designed to power the next generation of coherent transport at up to 1.2Tbps and be deployed in pairs to power a 2.4Tbps coherent transport solution. It operates at 130+ GBd, and leverages a 5nm complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) with silicon photonics for photonic integrated circuits (PICs). With the next generation of coherent
technology it is hoped that, as well as ad- ditional capacity, operators will experience other benefits. Serge Melle, Director Prod- uct Marketing at Nokia told Electro Optics at the OFC Conference: “For operators, scale, performance and sustainability are very important. You can actually combine PSE6 1.2Tbps together into a single 2.4Tbps channel, which means that you can then carry three 800GbE services into that one channel, allowing much more capaci- ty-per-fibre than having individual 800GbEs on individual wavelengths, which helps when it comes to scale.” The performance aspect has also been considered, continued Melle: “The perfor- mance part is being able to carry 800GbE, not just in the metro, but in regional long- haul networks, south of 2,000km. Being able to operate an 800GbE over a single wavelength can save operators a lot of costs, because they don’t have to put that 800GbE over two lower-speed wavelengths, so it reduces the number of optics. If you can reduce the number of optics and lever- age the latest silicon and Moore’s law, you can reduce power-per-bit and total network power consumption, which is important from the cost and sustainability angle.”
‘If you can reduce the number of optics and leverage the latest silicon and Moore’s law, you can reduce power-per-bit and total network power consumption’
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FEATURE
Infinera’s ICE7 leverages a 5nm CMOS and indium phosphide (InP) PICs from its own fabrication facility
“We’re seeing the trend for reduced en-
ergy consumption more and more,” agreed Robert Maher, CTO at Infinera, who also spoke to Electro Optics at OFC earlier this year. “Even when I attended a recent sub- sea conference, there was lots of talk about sustainable subsea deployments. And we have customers who have deployed our ICE4 optical engine on subsea cables, and they wanted to replace it with ICE6, and the number-one reason was power.” Infinera revealed its own next-genera- tion 1.2Tbps optical engine, the ICE7, just days before OFC opened its doors. ICE7 is designed to benefit operators by helping to drive down cost, space, and power-per- bit, while supporting symbol rates of up to 148GBd. It leverages a 5nm CMOS and indium phosphide (InP) PICs from its own fabrication facility and enables 800G-based transmission up to 3,000km. It can also be deployed over almost any type of network. ICE7 and an enhanced multi-haul optical line system were designed to increase the power and flexibility of the company’s GX Series Compact Modular Platform. “Everything we’re doing on the GX
platform in general and with the engines, it enables them on the high-end, to deliver more capacity and a lower total cost of own- ership,” continued Maher. “The GX chassis itself enables operators to get access to the newer technology faster, so they can take the advantages more easily without having to deploy and certify an entire new system. There is a need at the edge of the network to grow capacity cost effectively. Coher- ent is such a powerful tool to make that happen, and we need to enable operators to leverage that tool in more applications.” “And as we get better with DSP process-
ing, and electro optics,” said Munks, “the performance of those systems ends
up finally with increased reach and lower power consumption.” Demonstrating this, Fujitsu’s 1Finity
Ultra Optical transport platform has the ad- ditional benefit of upgraded liquid cooling. The platform is designed to deliver extreme performance and scalability with data rates of 1.2Tbps on a single wavelength, and the company is already planning a future upgrade to 1.6Tbps. It features a DSP using the latest semiconductor processes and liq- uid cooling technology, which the company says provides twice the cooling capacity of conventional technology. Speaking to our sister title Fibre Sys-
tems, Paul Havala, Head of Global Optical Planning at Fujitsu Network Communi- cations, explained: “The system benefits from extreme scale and performance. It features a C + L line system and a 1.2Tbps transponder that was made for terabit net- working, which makes sure that you have the maximum capacity for customers that are fibre constrained, or where that traffic really needs to be supported at capacity. And then there are also upgrade paths to extend and increase those rates over time. The improvement to its cooling allows the power to be reduced by 40 to 60%, depend- ing on which technology references you’re comparing it to – so that’s a huge saving. It also reduces fan noise, so you can run the fans at a lower speed, which allows the sys- tem to have longer life. So we think there are benefits beyond sustainability alone.” Ciena went directly to 1.6Tbps with its
own launch, the WaveLogic 6 with 200GBd optics, which was designed to support up to 1.6Tbps single-carrier wavelengths for metro ROADM deployments; 800Gbps over long links, and energy-efficient 800G plug- gables across 1,000km distances. Helen Xenos, Senior Director of Optical
October 2023 Electro Optics 31
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Infinera
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