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Insights

May 2, 2023

We are Looking for new Talent and Experts to grow Together

EFFECT Photonics are hiring for many positions in Brixham, UK and seeking passionate, talented, and…

EFFECT Photonics are hiring for many positions in Brixham, UK and seeking passionate, talented, and highly motivated people across levels and areas to grow with us.

EFFECT Photonics is a scale-up company now transitioning from funded- to revenue-based growth. The disruptive technology at the heart of our offering is the integration of photonic components into a chip and building that into a low-energy-consumption, robust and cost-effective module (match box-sized). We are initially targeting the launching of the 5G network. The dynamic nature of the rapidly growing customer demand for increasing data speed with reduced costs and environmental impacts demands technology developments focused on future needs, applications, and infrastructure. The only constant is change.

We started with 1 employee in Brixham, 5 years ago and now have 60, with another 70 employees based at our headquarters in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. We are excited to be recognised as one of Europe’s top IPO-worthy tech start-ups to build a successful career and are actively recruiting in the Brixham area.

The Brixham Engineering, Quality and Operations teams work very closely with Engineering teams at the Netherlands facility responsible for the development of the Photonic Integrated Chip (PIC), firmware and electronics. This synergy ensures strong focus on device technology that anticipates customer needs and integrates the equipment capabilities and product performance with manufacturing requirements.

Here in Brixham, we are responsible for: module package and process design and development for manufacture; reliability assurance; and volume manufacturing including assembly, testing and shipping processes. The team is working on rapid prototyping and aggressive increase of output volume regarding modules enabling the telecom infrastructure that will support IoT. We have made substantial investments in our staff and automated equipment and continue to do so according to a solid roadmap. We have strong links with customers around the world and are addressing marketplace expectations including ISO9001, ISO14001 and product compliance.

EFFECT Photonics is a dynamic, ambitious, and flexible company with a strong mix of experienced professionals, post docs, graduates, and trainees. Anyone can have an impact while building skills and experience leading to personal and professional growth and development. These are exciting times, as we refine our business infrastructure and develop the products and processes for the future.

In line with those efforts, we are seeking passionate, talented and highly motivated people across levels and areas to grow with us: from apprentices and trainees desiring experience working with experienced staff to highly specialised professionals eager to make a difference, from operators working in a high-quality manufacturing environment to administrative and business personnel. We offer exceptional opportunities to influence a business in its formative years, with everyone interacting with all levels of management and staff. Our Brixham location offers you one more stimulus to inspire your creativity: in a building managed by the University of Plymouth, you’ll enjoy a fantastic view!

Please take a look at our current job openings and contact us today at recruitment@effectphotonics.com for more information about opportunities to shape the future with a career at EFFECT Photonics.

Tags: careers, jobs, Photonics, UK

The Fabrication Process Inside a Photonic Foundry

Insights

May 1, 2023

The Fabrication Process Inside a Photonic Foundry

Photonics is one of the enabling technologies of the future. Light is the fastest information…

Photonics is one of the enabling technologies of the future. Light is the fastest information carrier in the universe and can transmit this information while dissipating less heat and energy than electrical signals. Thus, photonics can dramatically increase the speed, reach, and flexibility of communication networks and cope with the ever-growing demand for more data. And it will do so at a lower energy cost, decreasing the Internet’s carbon footprint. Meanwhile, fast and efficient photonic signals have massive potential for sensing and imaging applications in medical devices, automotive LIDAR, agricultural and food diagnostics, and more.

Given its importance, we should discuss the fabrication processes inside photonic semiconductor foundries.

Manufacturing semiconductor chips for photonics and electronics is one of the most complex procedures in the world. For example, back in his university days, EFFECT Photonics co-founder Boudewijn Docter described a fabrication process with 243 steps!

Yuqing Jiao, Associate Professor at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), explains the fabrication process in a few basic, simplified steps:

Grow or deposit your chip material
Print a pattern on the material
Etch the printed pattern into your material
Do some cleaning and extra surface preparation
Go back to step 1 and repeat as needed

Real life is, of course, a lot more complicated and will require cycling through these steps tens of times, leading to processes with more than 200 total steps. Let’s go through these basic steps in a bit more detail.

Figure 1: Basic steps of a semiconductor fabrication process that are repeated in a single fabrication cycle. An entire wafer manufacturing process requires tens of these cycles.

1. Layer Epitaxy and Deposition: Different chip elements require different semiconductor material layers. These layers can be grown on the semiconductor wafer via a process called epitaxy or deposited via other methods, such as physical or chemical vapor deposition.

Figure 2: Simplified example of PIC elements and their required material layers. Source: Smit et al. (2014)

2. Lithography (i.e., printing): There are a few lithography methods, but the one used for high-volume chip fabrication is projection optical lithography. The semiconductor wafer is coated with aphotosensitive polymer film called a photoresist. Meanwhile, the design layout pattern is transferred to an opaque material called a mask. The optical lithography system projects the mask pattern onto the photoresist. The exposed photoresist is then developed (like photographic film) to complete the pattern printing.

Figure 3: Comparison of different optical lithography approaches. Contact and proximity printing keeps the mask in contact with or close to the sample. Projection printing keeps the mask further away and is initially more expensive, but it is the technology of choice for high-volume manufacturing. Source: J. Shen, University of Waterloo Ph.D. Thesis (2018)

3. Etching: Having “printed” the pattern on the photoresist, it is time to remove (or etch) parts of the semiconductor material to transfer the pattern from the resist into the wafer. Etching techniques can be broadly classified into two categories.

Dry Etching: These processes remove material by bombarding it with ions. Typically, these ions come from a plasma of reactive gases like oxygen, boron, chlorine, etc. This approach is often used to etch a material anisotropically (i.e., in a specific direction).
Wet Etching: These processes involve the removal of material using a liquid reactant. The material to be etched is immersed in the solution, which will dissolve the targeted material layers. This solution usually consists of an acid, such as hydrofluoric acid (HFl), to etch silicon. Wet etching is typically used for etching a material isotropically (i.e., in all directions).

Figure 4: Example of what a semiconductor wafer with resist (red color) on top of it looks like before and after an etching step.

4. Cleaning and Surface Preparation: After etching, a series of steps will clean and prepare the surface before the next cycle.

Passivation: Adding layers of dielectric material (such as silica) to “passivate” the chip and make it more tolerant to environmental effects.
Planarization: Making the surface flat in preparation for future lithography and etching steps.
Metallization: Depositing metal components and films on the wafer. This might be done for future lithography and etching steps or, in the end, to add electrical contacts to the chip.

Figure 5 summarizes how an InP photonic device looks after the steps of layer epitaxy, etching, dielectric deposition and planarization, and metallization.

Figure 5: Cross-section of a semiconductor wafer structure after (a) epitaxial growth, (b) etching, (c) passivation and planarization, (d) metallization.

After this fabrication process ends, the processed wafers are shipped worldwide to be tested and packaged into photonic devices. This is an expensive process we discussed in one of our previous articles.

Takeaways

The process of making photonic integrated circuits is incredibly long and complex, and the steps we described in this article are a mere simplification of the entire process. It requires tremendous knowledge in chip design, fabrication, and testing from experts in different fields worldwide. EFFECT Photonics was founded by people who fabricated these chips themselves, understood the process intimately and developed the connections and network to develop cutting-edge PICs at scale.

Tags: Agricultural, Carbon Footprint, Chip Material, Cleaning, Communication Networks, Deposition, Energy Cost, Epitaxy, Etching, Fabrication Process, Food Diagnostics, Integrated Photonics, LIDAR, Lithography, Manufacturing, Medical Devices, Metallization, Photonic Foundry, Photonics, Semiconductor, Sensing and Imaging, Surface Preparation

We interview Russell Fuerst, our VP of Digital Signal Processing.

Insights

April 18, 2023

The Future of Coherent DSP Design: Interview with Russell Fuerst

Digital signal processors (DSPs) are the heart of coherent communication systems. They not only encode/decode…

Digital signal processors (DSPs) are the heart of coherent communication systems. They not only encode/decode data into the three properties of a light signal (amplitude, phase, polarization) but also handle error correction, analog-digital conversation, Ethernet framing, and compensation of dispersion and nonlinear distortion. And with every passing generation, they are assigned more advanced functions such as probabilistic constellation shaping.

There are still many challenges ahead to improve DSPs and make them transmit even more bits in more energy-efficient ways. Now that EFFECT Photonics has incorporated talent and intellectual property from Viasat’s Coherent DSP team, we hope to contribute to this ongoing research and development and make transceivers faster and more sustainable than ever. We ask Russell Fuerst, our Vice-President of Digital Signal Processing, how we can achieve these goals.

What’s the most exciting thing about joining EFFECT Photonics?

Before being acquired by EFFECT Photonics, our DSP design team has been a design-for-hire house. We’ve been doing designs for other companies that have put those designs in their products. By joining EFFECT Photonics, we can now do a design and stamp our brand on it. That’s exciting.

The other exciting thing is to have all the technologies under one roof. Having everything from the DSP to the PIC to the packaging and module-level elements in one company will allow us to make our products that much better.

We also find the company culture to be very relaxed and very collaborative. Even though we’re geographically diverse, it’s been straightforward to understand what other people and groups in the company are doing. It’s easy to talk to others and find out whom you need to talk to. There’s not a whole lot of organizational structure that blocks communication, so it’s been excellent from that perspective.

People at EFFECT Photonics were welcoming from day one, making us that much more excited to join.

What key technology challenges must be solved by DSP designers to thrive in the next 5 to 10 years?

The key is to bring the power down while also increasing the performance.

In the markets where coherent has been the de-facto solution, I think it’s essential to understand how to drive cost and power down either through the DSP design itself or by integrating the DSP with other technologies within the module. That will be where the benefits come from in those markets.

Similarly, there are markets where direct detection is the current technology of choice. We must understand how to insert coherent technology into those markets while meeting the stringent requirements of those important high-volume markets. Again, this progress will be largely tied to performance within the power and cost requirements.

As DSP technology has matured, other aspects outside of performance are becoming key, and understanding how we can work that into our products will be the key to success.

How do you think the DSP can be more tightly integrated with the PIC?

This is an answer that will evolve over time. We will become more closely integrated with the team in Eindhoven and learn some of the nuances of their mature design process. And similarly, they’ll understand the nuances of our design process that have matured over the years. As we understand the PIC technology and our in-house capabilities better, that will bring additional improvements that are currently unknown.

Right now, we are primarily focused on the obvious improvements tied to the fully-integrated platform. For example, the fact that we can have the laser on the PIC because of the active InP material. We want to understand how we co-design aspects of the module and shift the complexity from one design piece or component to another, thanks to being vertically integrated.

Another closely-tied area for improvement is on the modulator side. We think that the substantially lower drive voltages required for the InP modulator give us the possibility to eliminate some components, such as RF drivers. We could potentially drive the modulator directly from that DSP without any intermediary electronics, which would reduce the cost and power consumption. That’s not only tied to the lower drive voltages but also some proprietary signal conditioning we can do to minimize some of the nonlinearities in the modulator and improve the performance.

What are the challenges and opportunities of designing DSPs for Indium phosphide instead of silicon?

So, we already mentioned two opportunities with the laser and the modulator.

I think the InP integration makes the design challenges smaller than those facing DSP design for silicon photonics. The fact is that InP can have more active integrated components and that DSPs are inherently active electronic devices, so getting the active functions tuned and matched over time will be a challenge. It motivates our EFFECT DSP team to quickly integrate with the experienced EFFECT PIC design team to understand the fundamental InP platform a bit better. Once we understand it, the DSP designs will get more manageable with improved performance, especially as we have control over the designs of both DSP and PIC. As we get to the point where co-packaging is realized, there will also be some thermal management issues to consider.

When we started doing coherent DSP designs for optical communication over a decade ago, we pulled many solutions from the RF wireless and satellite communications space into our initial designs. Still, we couldn’t bring all those solutions to the optical markets.

However, when you get more of the InP active components involved, some of those solutions can finally be brought over and utilized. They were not used before in our designs for silicon photonics because silicon is not an active medium and lacked the performance to exploit these advanced techniques.

For example, we have done proprietary waveforms tuned to specific satellite systems in the wireless space. Our DSP team was able to design non-standard constellations and modulation schemes that increased the capacity of the satellite link over the previous generation of satellites. Similarly, we could tune the DSP’s waveform and performance to the inherent advantages of the InP platform to improve cost, performance, bandwidth utilization, and efficiency. That’s something that we’re excited about.

Takeaways

As Russell explained, the big challenge for DSP designers continues to be increasing performance while keeping down the power consumption. Finding ways to integrate the DSP more deeply with the InP platform can overcome this challenge, such as direct control of the laser and modulator from the DSP to novel waveform shaping methods. The presence of active components in the InP platforms also gives DSP designers the opportunity to import more solutions from the RF wireless space.

We look forward to our new DSP team at EFFECT Photonics settling into the company and trying out all these solutions to make DSPs faster and more sustainable!

Tags: coherent, DSP, energy efficient, InP, integration, performance, power consumption, Sustainable, Viasat

System-On-Chip: A smaller world full of big advantages

Insights

April 18, 2023

System-On-Chip: A smaller world full of big advantages

For those new to the subject, a System-on-Chip (SoC) is essentially an integrated electronic circuit…

For those new to the subject, a System-on-Chip (SoC) is essentially an integrated electronic circuit that takes a single platform and integrates a whole electronic or computer system onto it. As the name suggests, it combines that entire system on a single chip. To describe it very simply: imagine a full computer with a CPU, input and output ports, internal memory and so on; then miniaturize and compress it to fit on one chip. Depending on the kind of system, it can perform a variety of functions including signal processing, wireless communication, artificial intelligence and more.

The primary goal is to reduce energy waste and save on expense, while reducing the space occupied by large systems. With an SoC you achieve all those goals, as you essentially downsize what are normally multi-chip designs onto a single processor that uses much less power. The real-world applications of SoCs are practically limitless and priceless. They are used in most, if not all, portable devices, such as smartphones, cameras, tablets, and other wireless technologies. In fact, your smartphone is a good example of how an SoC works.

Use of your cell phone is not limited to making and receiving calls. You also use it to browse the internet, view videos, listen to audio, take photos, play games, send texts, and much more. None of this would be possible without multiple elements such as a graphics card, internet support, wireless connections, and GPS, to name but a few. An SoC allows you to take all of these components, put them on a single chip, shrink the whole package down to a size that can fit in the palm of your hand, and carry it around in your phone.

Along with the example of our portable phones, SoC is frequently used in equipment involved in the Internet of Things, embedded systems and, of course, photonics.

EFFECT Photonics’ spin on SoC

While electrical SoCs have been around for some time, EFFECT Photonics is the first company in the world to introduce a full optical SoC – combining all the optical elements needed for optical networking onto a single die.
One key application of EFFECT Photonics’ SoC technology is within dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM), and this is regarded as an important innovation in optical networks. DWDM is scalable, transparent and enables provision of high-bandwidth services. It is the technology of choice for many networking applications today. By using many different wavelengths of light to route data, these systems are more efficient, flexible, and cost-effective to build, own and operate compared to single-channel, point-to-point links. Thanks to our high-density electrical interconnect and packaging technology, the optical system-on-a-chip can be assembled for volume manufacture at low cost.

As the channel count increases, the physical space in which the equipment is housed gets larger and the power consumption increases as well. The key enablers for DWDM systems at the edge of the network are photonic integration of components within a single chip; and the ability to produce these in volume with high yield at low cost. This requires a change in the way indium phosphide (InP) chips are designed, tested, and packaged, which is where EFFECT Photonics comes in.

One of the key challenges for DWDM technology is the need for as many optical light sources, modulators, and detectors as there are channels in a system. Building and managing these using conventional discrete fibre optic components, line cards, AWG (arrayed waveguide) multiplexers and rackmount channel monitors quickly becomes prohibitively expensive. However, we can integrate all the following optical functions within a single InP chip: tuneable laser sources, AWG multiplexers, high-speed detectors, high-speed modulators, power taps and splitters, and channel monitoring.

Our SoC technology provides more bandwidth at a lower cost for applications like mobile fronthaul networks (5G), metro access networks and data centre interconnects (DCI). EFFECT Photonics has created a unique platform approach to integration, using high-yielding building blocks within the wafer. Growing different quaternary alloys of indium phosphide on a single wafer provides the following advantages:

All active and passive optical functions of a DWDM system combined into a single chip
Our unique packaging technology that scales in volume cost-effectively [parallel structure]
Smaller in size, lower in power
Industry-standard form factors and custom variants

For more on our optical system-on-a-chip products, visit: https://old.effect.jkc-dev.nl/products/pluggable-modules-direct-detect/
Get in touch with us for further information by sending your request to: sales@effectphotonics.com

Tags: 5G, DWDM, IntergratedPhotonics, Photonics, SFP

Insights

April 17, 2023

The Future of Coherent Transceivers in the Access

The demand for data and other digital services is rising exponentially. From 2010 to 2020,…

The demand for data and other digital services is rising exponentially. From 2010 to 2020, Internet users worldwide doubled, and global internet traffic increased 12-fold. From 2020 to 2026, internet traffic will likely increase 5-fold. To meet this demand, datacom and telecom operators need constantly upgrade their transport networks.

The major obstacles in this upgrade path remain the power consumption, thermal management, and affordability of transceivers. Over the last two decades, power ratings for pluggable modules have increased as we moved from direct detection to more power-hungry coherent transmission: from 2W for SFP modules to 3.5 W for QSFP modules and now to 14W for QSSFP-DD and 21.1W for OSFP form factors. This power consumption increase seems incompatible with the power constraints of the network edge.

This article will review trends in data rate, power consumption, and footprint for transceivers in the network edge that aim to address these challenges.

Downscaling Data Rates for the Access

Given the success of 400ZR pluggable coherent solutions in the market, discussions in the telecom sector about a future beyond 400G pluggables have often focused on 800G solutions and 800ZR. However, there is also increasing excitement about “downscaling” to 100G coherent products for applications in the network edge.

In the coming years, 100G coherent uplinks will become increasingly widespread in deployments and applications throughout the network edge. Some mobile access networks use cases must upgrade their existing 10G DWDM link aggregation into a single coherent 100G DWDM uplink. Meanwhile, cable networks and business services are upgrading their customer links from 1Gbps to 10Gbps, and this migration will be the significant factor that will increase the demand for coherent 100G uplinks. For carriers who provide converged cable/mobile access, these upgrades to 100G uplinks will enable opportunities to overlay more business services and mobile traffic into their existing cable networks.

You can read more about these developments in our previous article, When Will the Network Edge Go Coherent?

Moving Towards Low Power

Data centers and 5G networks might be hot commodities, but the infrastructure that enables them runs even hotter. Electronic equipment generates plenty of heat; the more heat energy an electronic device dissipates, the more money and energy must be spent to cool it down. These power efficiency issues do not just affect the environment but also the bottom lines of communications companies.

As shown in the table below, the growth of data centers and wireless networks will continue to drive power consumption upwards.

Figure : Comparison of estimated ICT electric power consumption in 2020 and 2030, divided by different ICT sectors. Source: Anders Andrae (Huawei), 2020.

These power constraints are even more pressing in the access network sector. Unlike data centers and the network core, access network equipment lives in uncontrolled environments with limited cooling capabilities. Therefore, every extra watt of pluggable power consumption will impact how vendors and operators design their cabinets and equipment.

These struggles are a major reason why QSFP28 form factor solutions are becoming increasingly attractive in the 100ZR domain. Their power consumption (up to 6 watts) is lower than that of QSFP-DD form factors (up to 14 Watts), which allows them to be stacked more densely in access network equipment rooms. Besides, QSFP28 modules are compatible with existing access network equipment, which often features QSFP28 slots.

Aside from the move to QSFP28 form factors for 100G coherent, EFFECT Photonics also believes in two other ways to reduce power consumption.

Increased Integration: The interconnections among smaller, highly-integrated optical components consume less power than those among more discrete components. We will discuss this further in the next section.
Co-Design: As we explained in a previous article about fit-for-platform DSPs, a transceiver optical engine designed on the indium phosphide platform could be designed to run at a voltage compatible with the DSP’s signal output. This way, the optimized DSP could drive the PIC directly without needing a separate analog driver, doing away with a significant power conversion overhead

Can We Still Move Towards Smaller Footprints?

Moving toward smaller pluggable footprints should not necessarily be a goal, but as we mentioned in the previous section, it is a means toward the goal of lower power consumption. Decreasing the size of optical components and their interconnections means that the light inside the chip will travel a smaller distance and accumulate fewer optical losses.

Let’s look at an example of lasers. In the last decade, technological progress in tunable laser packaging and integration has matched the need for smaller footprints. In 2011, tunable lasers followed the multi-source agreement (MSA) for integrable tunable laser assemblies (ITLAs). The ITLA package measured around 30.5 mm in width and 74 mm in length. By 2015, tunable lasers were sold in the more compact Micro-ITLA form factor, which cut the original ITLA package size in half. And in 2019, laser developers (see examples here and here) announced a new Nano-ITLA form factor that reduced the size by almost half again.

Evolution of tunable laser form factors for coherent optics SM — Evolution of tunable laser form factors for coherent optics (2011-2021). Figure inspired from a picture in Laser Focus World.

Reducing the footprint of tunable lasers in the future will need even greater integration of their parts. For example, every tunable laser needs a wavelength locker component that can stabilize the laser’s output regardless of environmental conditions such as temperature. Integrating the wavelength locker component on the laser chip instead of attaching it externally would help reduce the laser package’s footprint and power consumption.

Another potential future to reduce the size of tunable laser packages is related to the control electronics. The current ITLA standards include the complete control electronics on the laser package, including power conversion and temperature control. However, if the transceiver’s main board handles some of these electronic functions instead of the laser package, the size of the laser package can be reduced.

This approach means the reduced laser package would only have full functionality if connected to the main transceiver board. However, some transceiver developers will appreciate the laser package reduction and the extra freedom to provide their own laser control electronics.

Takeaways

The ever-increasing bandwidth demands in access networks force coherent pluggables to face the complex problem of maintaining a good enough performance while moving to lower cost and power consumption.

The move towards 100G coherent solutions in QSFP28 form factors will play a major role in meeting the power requirements of the access network sector. Further gains can be achieved with greater integration of optical components and co-designing the optics and electronic engines of the transceiver to reduce inefficiencies. Further gains in footprint for transceivers can also be obtained by eliminating redundant laser control functions in both the laser package and the main transceiver board.

Tags: 100G Coherent Products, 400ZR Pluggable Coherent Solutions, 5G Networks, 800G Solutions, 800ZR, Affordability, Coherent Transceivers, datacom, Direct Detection, EFFECT Photonics, Internet Traffic, network edge, OSFP Form Factors, Photonics, Pluggable Modules, power consumption, Power Efficiency, QSFP Modules, QSSFP-DD, Telecom Operators, Thermal Management

Insights

April 17, 2023

When will the Network Edge go Coherent?

Article first published 27 July 2022, updated 12 April 2023. Network carriers want to provide…

Article first published 27 July 2022, updated 12 April 2023.

Network carriers want to provide communications solutions in all areas: mobile access, cable networks, and fixed access to business customers. They want to provide this extra capacity and innovative and personalized connectivity and entertainment services to their customers.

Deploying only legacy direct detect technologies will not be enough to cover these growing bandwidth and service demands of mobile, cable, and business access networks with the required reach. In several cases, networks must deploy more 100G coherent dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) technology to transmit more information over long distances. Several applications in the optical network edge could benefit from upgrading from 10G DWDM or 100G grey aggregation uplinks to 100G DWDM optics:

Mobile Mid-haul benefits from seamlessly upgrading existing uplinks from 10G to 100G DWDM.
Mobile Backhaul benefits from upgrading their links to 100G IPoDWDM.
Cable Access links could upgrade the uplinks of existing termination devices such as optical line terminals (OLTs) and Converged Cable Access Platforms (CCAPs) from 10G to 100G DWDM.
Business Services could scale enterprise bandwidth beyond single-channel 100G grey links.

However, network providers have often stuck to their 10G DWDM or 100G grey links because the existing 100G DWDM solutions could not check all the required boxes. “Scaled-down” coherent 400ZR solutions had the required reach and tunability but were too expensive and power-hungry for many access network applications. Besides, ports in small to medium IP routers used in most edge deployments often do not support the QSFP-DD form factor commonly used in 400ZR modules but the QSFP28 form factor.

Fortunately, the rise of 100ZR solutions in the QSFP28 form factor is changing the landscape for access networks. “The access market needs a simple, pluggable, low-cost upgrade to the 10G DWDM optics that it has been using for years. 100ZR is that upgrade,” said Scott Wilkinson, Lead Analyst for Optical Components at market research firm Cignal AI. “As access networks migrate from 1G solutions to 10G solutions, 100ZR will be a critical enabling technology.”

In this article, we will discuss how the recent advances in 100ZR solutions will enable the evolution of different segments of the network edge: mobile midhaul and backhaul, business services, and cable.

How Coherent 100G Can Move into Mobile X-haul

The upgrade from 4G to 5G has shifted the radio access network (RAN) from a two-level structure with backhaul and fronthaul in 4G to a three-level structure with back-, mid-, and fronthaul:

Fronthaul is the segment between the active antenna unit (AAU) and the distributed unit (DU)
Midhaul is the segment from DU to the centralized unit (CU)
Backhaul is the segment from CU to the core network.

Figure 1: Simplified diagram that shows and compares the building blocks of 4G (left) and 5G (right) access networks and the links between these blocks.

The initial rollout of 5G has already happened in most developed countries, with many operators upgrading their 1G SFPs transceiver to 10G SFP+ devices. Some of these 10G solutions had DWDM technology; many were single-channel grey transceivers. However, mobile networks must move to the next phase of 5G deployments, which requires installing and aggregating more and smaller base stations to exponentially increase the number of devices connected to the network.

These mature phases of 5G deployment will require operators to continue scaling fiber capacity cost-effectively with more widespread 10G DWDM SFP+ solutions and 25G SFP28 transceivers. These upgrades will put greater pressure on the aggregation segments of mobile backhaul and midhaul. These network segments commonly used link aggregation of multiple 10G DWDM links into a higher bandwidth group (such as 4x10G). However, this link aggregation requires splitting up larger traffic streams and can be complex to integrate across an access ring. A single 100G uplink would reduce the need for such link aggregation and simplify the network setup and operations. If you want to know more about the potential market and reach of this link aggregation upgrade, we recommend reading the recent Cignal AI report on 100ZR technologies.

Cable Migration to 10G PON Will Drive the Use of Coherent 100G Uplinks

According to Cignal AI’s 100ZR report, the biggest driver of 100ZR use will come from multiplexing fixed access network links upgrading from 1G to 10G. This trend will be reflected in cable networks’ long-awaited migration from Gigabit Passive Optical Networks (GPON) to 10G PON. This evolution is primarily guided by the new DOCSIS 4.0 standard, which promises 10Gbps download speeds for customers and will require several hardware upgrades in cable networks.

To multiplex these new larger 10Gbps customer links, cable providers and network operators need to upgrade their optical line terminals (OLTs) and Converged Cable Access Platforms (CCAPs) from 10G to 100G DWDM uplinks. Many of these new optical hubs will support up to 40 or 80 optical distribution networks (ODNs), too, so the previous approach of aggregating multiple 10G DWDM uplinks will not be enough to handle this increased capacity and higher number of channels.

Anticipating such needs, the non-profit R&D organization CableLabs has recently pushed to develop a 100G Coherent PON (C-PON) standard. Their proposal offers 100 Gbps per wavelength at a maximum reach of 80 km and up to a 1:512 split ratio. CableLabs anticipates C-PON and its 100G capabilities will play a significant role not just in cable optical network aggregation but in other use cases such as mobile x-haul, fiber-to-the-building (FTTB), long-reach rural scenarios, and distributed access networks.

Towards 100G Coherent and QSFP28 in Business Services

Almost every organization uses the cloud in some capacity, whether for development and test resources or software-as-a-service applications. While the cost and flexibility of the cloud are compelling, its use requires fast, high-bandwidth wide-area connectivity to make cloud-based applications work as they should.

Similarly to cable networks, these needs will require enterprises to upgrade their existing 1G Ethernet private lines to 10G Ethernet, which will also drive a greater need for 100G coherent uplinks. Cable providers and operators will also want to take advantage of their upgraded 10G PON networks and expand the reach and capacity of their business services.

The business and enterprise services sector was the earliest adopter of 100G coherent uplinks, deploying “scaled-down” 400ZR transceivers in the QSFP-DD form factor since they were the solution available at the time. However, these QSFP-DD slots also support QSFP28 form factors, so the rise of QSFP 100ZR solutions will provide these enterprise applications with a more attractive upgrade with lower cost and power consumption. These QSFP28 solutions had struggled to become more widespread before because they required the development of new, low-power digital signal processors (DSPs), but DSP developers and vendors are keenly jumping on board the 100ZR train and have announced their development projects: Acacia, Coherent/ADVA, Marvell/InnoLight, and Marvell/OE Solutions. This is also why EFFECT Photonics has announced its plans to co-develop a 100G DSP with Credo Semiconductor that best fits 100ZR solutions in the QSFP28 form factor.

Takeaways

In the coming years, 100G coherent uplinks will become increasingly widespread in deployments and applications throughout the network edge. Some mobile access networks use cases must upgrade their existing 10G DWDM link aggregation into a single coherent 100G DWDM uplink. Meanwhile, cable networks and business services are upgrading their customer links from 1Gbps to 10Gbps, and this migration will be the major factor that will increase the demand for coherent 100G uplinks. For carriers who provide converged cable/mobile access, these upgrades to 100G uplinks will enable opportunities to overlay more business services and mobile traffic into their existing cable networks.

As the QSFP28 100ZR ecosystem expands, production will scale up, and these solutions will become more widespread and affordable, opening up even more use cases in access networks.

Tags: 5G, access, aggregation, backhaul, capacity, DWDM, fronthaul, Integrated Photonics, LightCounting, metro, midhaul, mobile, mobile access, network, optical networking, optical technology, photonic integrated chip, photonic integration, Photonics, PIC, PON, programmable photonic system-on-chip, solutions, technology

Technologies and trends and their impact

Insights

April 14, 2023

Scaling Up Live Event Coverage with 5G Technology

Everyone who has attended a major venue or event, such as a football stadium or…

Reconfigurable DSPs for Versatile Pluggables

Insights

April 14, 2023

Reconfigurable DSPs for Versatile Pluggables

Carriers must solve the dilemma of how to use small and affordable coherent pluggables while…

Carriers must solve the dilemma of how to use small and affordable coherent pluggables while still having enough performance and reach to cover most of their network links. At EFFECT Photonics, we believe coherent pluggables with an optical System-on-Chip (SoC) can play a vital role in solving this carrier’s dilemma and simplifying network upgrades. Meanwhile, these new coherent pluggables could also enable longer, and higher-capacity data center interconnects for more sustainable data center architectures.

Another big factor in making networks more affordable and sustainable is software-defined networks (SDNs) and automation. SDNs enable the network function virtualization (NFV), which allows operators to implement more functions to manage and orchestrate the network. Operators will reap even further benefits by using an artificial intelligence (AI) management and orchestration layer with the SDN/NFV layer, as shown in the figure below.

Figure 1: Example of a carrier network with different applications (mobile, home, office) automated via NFV control and AI management.

However, creating a fully automated network that can handle the ever-increasing amount of data and connected devices requires us to go beyond just adjusting the higher network layers. The orchestration and management software should also interface with the physical layer of the network, and that requires smart optical pluggable that adapt to varying network requirements. These requirements place additional burdens on digital signal processors (DSPs). DSPs are a vital component of coherent communication systems, as they perform the coding, decoding, and error corrections on the optical signal. Fortunately, the advances in electronic integration and standards make it so that a versatile coherent pluggable can benefit from an equally versatile and reconfigurable DSP.

Future Automated Networks Must Also Work on the Physical Layer

Telecom and datacom providers who want to become market leaders must scale up while also learning to allocate their existing network resources most efficiently and dynamically. SDNs can help achieve this efficient, dynamic network management. In a nutshell, the SDN paradigm separates the switching hardware from the software, allowing operators to virtualize network functions in a single centralized controller unit. This centralized management and orchestration (MANO) layer can implement network functions that the switches do not, allowing network operators to allocate network resources more intelligently and dynamically. This added flexibility and optimization will improve network outcomes for operators.

Figure 2: Comparing a traditional network approach (left) with an SDN/NFC approach (right).

However, the upcoming 5G networks will consist of a massive number of devices, software applications, and technologies. EFFECT Photonics believes that handling all these new devices and use cases will require self-managed, zero-touch automated networks. Realizing this full network automation requires two additional components alongside SDN and NFV:

Artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms for complete network automation: For example, AI in network management will become a significant factor in reducing the energy consumption of future telecom networks.
Sensor and control data flow across all OSI model layers, including the physical layer: As networks get bigger and more complex, the management and orchestration (MANO) software needs more degrees of freedom and knobs to adjust. Next-generation MANO software needs to adjust and optimize both the physical and network layers to fit the network best.

Achieving the second goal requires smart optical equipment and components that can be diagnosed and managed remotely from the MANO layer. This context is where smart pluggable transceivers with reconfigurable DSPs come into play.

The Importance of Standardized Error Correction

Forward error correction (FEC) implemented by DSPs has become a vital component of coherent communication systems. FEC makes the coherent link much more tolerant to noise than a direct detect system and enables much longer reach and higher capacity. Thanks to FEC, coherent links can handle bit error rates that are literally a million times higher than a typical direct detect link. In other words, FEC algorithms allow the DSP to enhance the link performance without changing the hardware. This enhancement is analogous to imaging cameras: image processing algorithms allow the lenses inside your phone camera to produce a higher-quality image.

Figure 1 Simplified diagram of a network link with Forward Error Correction (FEC). — Figure 3: Simplified diagram of a network link with forward error correction (FEC). The FEC encoder adds a series of redundant bits (called overhead) to the transmitted data stream. The receiver can use this overhead to check for errors without asking the transmitter to resend the data.

When coherent transmission emerged, all FEC algorithms were proprietary. Equipment and component manufacturers closely guarded their FEC because it provided a critical competitive advantage. Therefore, coherent transceivers from different vendors could not operate with each other, and a single vendor had to be used for the entire network deployment. However, vendors had to adapt with data center providers pushing disaggregation deeper into communication networks. Their coherent transceivers needed to become interoperable, so FEC algorithms needed standardization. The OIF 400ZR standard for data center interconnects uses a public algorithm called concatenated FEC (CFEC). In contrast, some 400ZR+ MSA standards use open FEC (oFEC), which provides a more extended reach at the cost of a bit more bandwidth and energy consumption. For the longest possible link lengths (500+ kilometers), proprietary FECs become necessary for 400G transmission. Still, at least the public FEC standards have achieved interoperability for a large segment of the 400G transceiver market.

A Smart DSP to Rule All Network Links

A smart pluggable transceiver that can adapt to all the applications we have mentioned before—data centers, carrier networks, SDNs—requires an equally smart and versatile DSP. It must be a DSP that can be reconfigured via software to adapt to different network conditions and use cases. For example, a smart DSP could switch among different FEC algorithms to adapt to network performance and use cases. For example, let’s look at the case of upgrading a long metro link of 650km running at 100 Gbps with open FEC. The operator needs to increase that link capacity to 400 Gbps, but open FEC could struggle to provide the necessary link performance. However, if the DSP can be reconfigured to use a proprietary FEC standard, the transceiver will be able to handle this upgraded link.

	400ZR	Open ZR+	Proprietary Long Haul
Target Application	Edge data center interconnect	Metro, Regional data center interconnect	Long-Haul Carrier
Target Reach @ 400G	120km	500km	1000 km
Form Factor	QSFP-DD/OSFP	QSFP-DD/OSFP	QSFP-DD/OSFP
FEC	CFEC	oFEC	Proprietary
Standards / MSA	OIF	OpenZR+ MSA	Proprietary

Table 1: Summary of different use cases and standards for a 400G pluggable transceiver.

Reconfigurable DSPs can also be beneficial to auto-configure links to deal with specific network conditions, especially in brownfield links. For example, the DSP can be reconfigured to transmit at a higher baud rate if the link has a good quality fiber. However, the DSP could be reconfigured to scale down the baud rate to avoid bit errors if the fiber quality is poor. If the smart pluggable detects that the fiber length is relatively short, it could scale down the laser transmitter power or the DSP power consumption to save energy.

Takeaways

A versatile pluggable that can handle different use cases – data center links, long metro links, and dynamic management and orchestration layers – must have the ability to use different coding and error coding schemes and adapt to different network requirements. The DSP must be equally versatile and switch among several operating modes – 400ZR, 400ZR+, proprietary – and error correction methods – cFEC, oFEC, and proprietary. Together with a programmable optical system on chip, the DSP can not just add software corrections but also make optical hardware changes (output power, turn amplifiers on/off) to adapt to different noise scenarios. Through these adjustments, the next generation of pluggable transceivers will be able to handle all the telecom carrier and data center use cases we can throw at it.

Tags: acquisition, coherent, coherent communication systems, coherent optical module vendor, DSP, FEC, forward error correction, green, green transceivers, high vertical integration, independent coherent optical module vendor, Integrated Photonics, optical digital signal processing, optical engine, optical transceivers, photonic integration, Photonics, pluggables, Transceivers, tunable laser, tuneability

Insights

April 5, 2023

Enabling a 100ZR Ecosystem

Given the success of 400ZR pluggable coherent solutions in the market, discussions in the telecom…

Given the success of 400ZR pluggable coherent solutions in the market, discussions in the telecom sector about a future beyond 400G pluggables have often focused on 800G solutions and 800ZR. However, there is also increasing excitement about “downscaling” to 100G coherent products for applications in the network edge. The industry is labeling these pluggables as 100ZR.

A recently released Heavy Reading survey revealed that over 75% of operators surveyed believe that 100G coherent pluggable optics will be used extensively in their edge and access evolution strategy. In response to this interest from operators, several vendors are keenly jumping on board the 100ZR train by announcing their development projects: Acacia, Coherent/ADVA, Marvell/InnoLight, and Marvell/OE Solutions.

This growing interest and use cases for 100ZR are also changing how industry analysts view the potential of the 100ZR market. Last February, Cignal AI released a report on 100ZR which stated that the viability of new low-power solutions in the QSFP28 form factor enabled use cases in access networks, thus doubling the size of their 100ZR shipment forecasts.

“The access market needs a simple, pluggable, low-cost upgrade to the 10G DWDM optics that it has been using for years. 100ZR is that upgrade. As access networks migrate from 1G solutions to 10G solutions, 100ZR will be a critical enabling technology.”
Scott Wilkinson, Lead Analyst for Optical Components at Cignal AI.

The 100ZR market can expand even further, however. Access networks are heavily price-conscious, and the lower prices of 100ZR pluggables become, the more widely they will be adopted. Reaching such a goal requires a vibrant 100ZR ecosystem with multiple suppliers that can provide lasers, digital signal processors (DSPs), and full transceiver solutions that address the access market’s needs and price targets.

The Constraints of Power in the Access

Initially, 100G coherent solutions were focused on the QSFP-DD form factor that was popularized by 400ZR solutions. However, power consumption has prevented these QSFP-DD solutions from becoming more viable in the access network domain.

Unlike data centers and the network core, access network equipment lives in uncontrolled environments with limited cooling capabilities. Therefore, every extra watt of pluggable power consumption will impact how vendors and operators design their cabinets and equipment. QSFP-DD modules forced operators and equipment vendors to use larger cooling components (heatsinks and fans), meaning that each module would need more space to cool appropriately. The increased need for cabinet real estate makes these modules more costly to deploy in the access domain.

These struggles are a major reason why QSFP28 form factor solutions are becoming increasingly attractive in the 100ZR domain. Their power consumption (up to 6 watts) is lower than that of QSFP-DD form factors (up to 14 Watts), which allows them to be stacked more densely in access network equipment rooms. Besides, QSFP28 modules are compatible with existing access network equipment, which often features QSFP28 slots.

Ecosystems to Overcome the Laser and DSP Bottlenecks

Even though QSFP28 modules are better at addressing the power concerns of the access domain, some obstacles prevent their wider availability.

Since QSFP28 pluggables have a lower power consumption and slightly smaller footprint requirements, they also need new laser and DSP solutions. The industry cannot simply incorporate the same lasers and DSPs used for 400ZR devices. This is why EFFECT Photonics has announced its plans to develop a pico tunable laser assembly (pTLA) and co-develop a 100G DSP that will best fit 100ZR solutions in the QSFP28 form factor.

However, a 100ZR industry with only one or two laser and DSP suppliers will struggle to scale up and make these solutions more widely accessible. The 400ZR market provides a good example of the benefits of a vibrant ecosystem. Four vendors are currently shipping DSPs for 400ZR solutions, and even more companies have announced plans to develop DSPs. This larger vendor ecosystem will help 400ZR production scale up in volume and satisfy a rapidly growing market.

While the 100ZR market is smaller than the 400ZR one, its ecosystem must follow its example and expand to enable new use cases and further increase the market size.

Standards and Interoperability Make 100ZR More Widespread

Another reason 400ZR solutions became so widespread is their standardization and interoperability. Previously, the 400G space was more fragmented, and pluggables from different vendors could not operate with each other, forcing operators to use a single vendor for their entire network deployment.

Eventually, datacom and telecom providers approached their suppliers and the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) about the need to develop an interoperable 400G coherent solution that addressed their needs. These discussions and technology development led the OIF to publish the 400ZR implementation agreement in 2020. This standardization and interoperability effort enabled the explosive growth of the 400G market.

100ZR solutions must follow a similar path to reach a larger market. If telecom and datacom operators want more widespread and affordable 100ZR solutions, more of them will have to join the push for 100ZR standardization and interoperability. This includes standards not just for the power consumption and line interfaces but also for management and control interfaces, enabling more widespread use of remote provisioning and diagnostics. These efforts will make 100ZR devices easier to implement across access networks.

Takeaways

The demand from access network operators for 100ZR solutions is there, but it has yet to fully materialize in the industry forecasts because, right now, there is not enough supply of viable 100ZR solutions that can address their targets. So in a way, further growth of the 100ZR market is a self-fulfilled prophecy: the more suppliers and operators support 100ZR, the easier it is to scale up the supply and meet the price and power targets of access networks, expanding the potential market. Instead of one or two vendors fighting for control of a smaller 100ZR pie, having multiple vendors and standardization efforts will increase the supply, significantly increasing the size of the pie and benefiting everyone’s bottom line.

Therefore, EFFECT Photonics believes in the vision of a 100ZR ecosystem where multiple vendors can provide affordable laser, DSP, and complete transceiver solutions tailored to network edge use cases. Meanwhile, if network operators push towards greater standardization and interoperability, 100ZR solutions can become even more widespread and easy to use.

Tags: 100ZR, access networks, DSP, ecosystem, edge, laser, market, price, solutions

Insights

March 28, 2023

What DSPs Does the Cloud Edge Need?

By storing and processing data closer to the end user and reducing latency, smaller data…

By storing and processing data closer to the end user and reducing latency, smaller data centers on the network edge significantly impact how networks are designed and implemented. These benefits are causing the global market for edge data centers to explode, with PWC predicting that it will nearly triple from $4 billion in 2017 to $13.5 billion in 2024. Various trends are driving the rise of the edge cloud: 5G networks and the Internet of Things (IoT), augmented and virtual reality applications, network function virtualization, and content delivery networks.

Several of these applications require lower latencies than before, and centralized cloud computing cannot deliver those data packets quickly enough. As shown in Table 1, a data center on a town or suburb aggregation point could halve the latency compared to a centralized hyperscale data center. Enterprises with their own data center on-premises can reduce latencies by 12 to 30 times compared to hyperscale data centers.

Type of Edge		Datacenter	Location	Number of DCs per 10M people	Average Latency	Size
On-premises edge		Enterprise site	Businesses	NA	2-5 ms	1 rack max
Network (Mobile)	Tower edge	Tower	Nationwide	3000	10 ms	2 racks max
	Outer edge	Aggregation points	Town	150	30 ms	2-6 racks
	Inner edge	Core	Major city	10	40 ms	10+ racks
Regional edge		Regional	Major city	100	50 ms	100+ racks
Not edge		Hyperscale	State/national	1	60+ ms	5000+ racks

Table 1: Types of edge data centers and their characteristics. Source: STL Partners

This situation leads to hyperscale data center providers cooperating with telecom operators to install their servers in the existing carrier infrastructure. For example, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is implementing edge technology in carrier networks and company premises (e.g., AWS Wavelength, AWS Outposts). Google and Microsoft have strategies and products that are very similar. In this context, edge computing poses a few problems for telecom providers. They must manage hundreds or thousands of new nodes that will be hard to control and maintain.

These conditions mean that optical transceivers for these networks, and thus their digital signal processors (DSPs), must have flexible and low power consumption and smart features that allow them to adapt to different network conditions.

Using Adaptable Power Settings

Reducing power consumption in the cloud edge is not just about reducing the maximum power consumption of transceivers. Transceivers and DSPs must also be smart and decide whether to operate on low- or high-power mode depending on the optical link budget and fiber length. For example, if the transceiver must operate at its maximum capacity, a programmable interface can be controlled remotely to set the amplifiers at maximum power. However, if the operator uses the transceiver for just half of the maximum capacity, the transceiver can operate with lower power on the amplifiers. The transceiver uses energy more efficiently and sustainably by adapting to these circumstances.

Fiber monitoring is also an essential variable in this equation. A smart DSP could change its modulation scheme or lower the power of its semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) if telemetry data indicates a good quality fiber. Conversely, if the fiber quality is poor, the transceiver can transmit with a more limited modulation scheme or higher power to reduce bit errors. If the smart pluggable detects that the fiber length is relatively short, the laser transmitter power or the DSP power consumption could be scaled down to save energy.

The Importance of a Co-Design Philosophy for DSPs

Transceiver developers often source their DSP, laser, and optical engine from different suppliers, so all these chips are designed separately. This setup reduces the time to market and simplifies the research and design processes, but it comes with performance and power consumption trade-offs.

In such cases, the DSP is like a Swiss army knife: a jack of all trades designed for different kinds of PIC but a master of none. Given the ever-increasing demand for capacity and the need for sustainability both as financial and social responsibility, transceiver developers increasingly need a steak knife rather than a Swiss army knife.

As we explained in a previous article about fit-for-platform DSPs, a transceiver optical engine designed on the indium phosphide platform could be designed to run at a voltage compatible with the DSP’s signal output. This way, the optimized DSP could drive the PIC directly without needing a separate analog driver, doing away with a significant power conversion overhead compared to a silicon photonics setup, as shown in the figure below.

Figure 1: Comparison between the drive power and power consumption of three different PIC + DSP pairings: standard DSP with a silicon PIC, standard DSP with an InP PIC, and an optimized DSP with an InP.

Scaling the Edge Cloud with Automation

With the rise of edge data centers, telecom providers must manage hundreds or thousands of new nodes that will take much work to control and maintain. Furthermore, providers also need a flexible network with pay-as-you-go scalability that can handle future capacity needs. Automation is vital to achieving such flexibility and scalability.

Automation potential improves further by combining artificial intelligence with the software-defined networks (SDNs) framework that virtualizes and centralizes network functions. This creates an automated and centralized management layer that can allocate resources efficiently and dynamically. For example, the AI network controller can take telemetry data from the whole network to decide where to route traffic and adjust power levels, reducing power consumption.

In this context, smart digital signal processors (DSPs) and transceivers can give the AI controller more degrees of freedom to optimize the network. They could provide more telemetry to the AI controller so that it makes better decisions. The AI management layer can then remotely control programmable interfaces in the transceiver and DSP so that the optical links can adjust the varying network conditions. If you want to know more about these topics, you can read last week’s article about transceivers in the age of AI.

Takeaways

Cloud-native applications require edge data centers that handle increased traffic and lower network latency. However, their implementation came with the challenges of more data center interconnects and a massive increase in nodes to manage. Scaling edge data center networks will require greater automation and more flexible power management, and smarter DSPs and transceivers will be vital to enable these goals.

Co-design approaches can optimize the interfacing of the DSP with the optical engine, making the transceiver more power efficient. Further power consumption gains can also be achieved with smarter DSPs and transceivers that provide telemetry data to centralized AI controllers. These smart network components can then adjust their power output based on the decisions and instructions of the AI controller.

Tags: 5G, AI, artificial intelligence, Augmented Reality, automation, cloud edge, Co-Design Philosophy, data centers, Delivery Networks, DSPs, Edge Cloud, Fiber Monitoring, Hyperscale Data Center, Internet of Things, IoT, latency, Network Function Virtualization, optical transceivers, power consumption, Software-Defined Networks, Telecom Operators, Virtual Reality

Sub-Assemblies: pITLA

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Sub-Assemblies: pITLA

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Sub-Assemblies: pITLA

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Takeaways

What’s the most exciting thing about joining EFFECT Photonics?

What key technology challenges must be solved by DSP designers to thrive in the next 5 to 10 years?

How do you think the DSP can be more tightly integrated with the PIC?

What are the challenges and opportunities of designing DSPs for Indium phosphide instead of silicon?

Takeaways

EFFECT Photonics’ spin on SoC

Downscaling Data Rates for the Access

Moving Towards Low Power

Can We Still Move Towards Smaller Footprints?

Takeaways

How Coherent 100G Can Move into Mobile X-haul

Cable Migration to 10G PON Will Drive the Use of Coherent 100G Uplinks

Towards 100G Coherent and QSFP28 in Business Services

Takeaways

A Higher Bandwidth Experience

New Ways of Interaction

Strengthening the Transport Network

Takeaways

Future Automated Networks Must Also Work on the Physical Layer

The Importance of Standardized Error Correction

A Smart DSP to Rule All Network Links

Takeaways

The Constraints of Power in the Access

Ecosystems to Overcome the Laser and DSP Bottlenecks

Standards and Interoperability Make 100ZR More Widespread

Takeaways

Using Adaptable Power Settings

The Importance of a Co-Design Philosophy for DSPs

Scaling the Edge Cloud with Automation

Takeaways

Sub-Assemblies: pITLA

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Contact Us