ECOC shows telecoms rates racing past 100G

10 Oct 2012

Record attendance in Amsterdam, anticipating 400G, even terabit comms

Nexus Business Media, organiser of the latest European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC) held last month in Amsterdam, announced yesterday that the show had attracted over 5,500 global industry professionals. The corresponding Market Focus conference attendance of 1700 was also the largest in the event’s 38 year history.

The Market Focus has become a focal point of the show, with key presentations involving major players such as Vodafone, Neophotonics, OpSIS. Google, Oclaro and the FTTH Council.

Beverley Lucas, Group Event Manager for NBM, said, “With over 325 exhibitors this year and an even larger FTTx Centre, we see continual growth in ECOC’s popularity. Next year, we move to London and we are expecting a terrific turnout from visitors and exhibitors, and we look forward to creating an even bigger buzz around 2013.”

As the need for greater optical communications bandwidth continues, highlights from this year’s exhibition included the latest products to address 100Gbit/s (“100G”) capability, with some industry discussions now moving towards 400G systems and beyond. Some of the key 100G developments (and more) are described here:

Oclaro shows ‘100G leadership’

Oclaro (NASDAQ: OCLR), a tier-one provider and innovator of optical communications and laser solutions, debuted a range of 100G products and technologies in Amsterdam, as well as providing a number of key speakers for industry panels.

Jim Haynes, President of Oclaro’s Global Business, commented, "Oclaro has been able to leverage decades of optical expertise to deliver a complete portfolio of 100G solutions that provide the performance, reliability, small form factor and low power consumption that customers need to deploy and interface with today's high-speed coherent networks."

On show, among other products, was Oclaro’s latest “second-generation 100G CFP (Centum Gbit/s form-factor pluggable) transceiver and first-generation CFP2 100G transceiver designed for 10km transmission over single-mode fiber. These low power transceivers represent the industry's first interoperable CFP and CFP2 solutions available and designed for 100G networks for the core, metro, access, enterprise and datacenter deployments.

Finisar’s WaveShaper and 100GE CFP2 module

Finisar (NASDAQ: FNSR) demonstrated its new WaveShaper 2000S Polarization Processor and WaveShaper 4000S Fourier Processor, describing both devices as enabling more thorough system testing and reduced development time for optical components and systems.

In addition, Finisar showed its 100 GE (Gigabit Ethernet) CFP2 module, based on the CFP2 MSA form factor. This high-density, hot-pluggable optical transceiver is designed for standards-compliant 100GBASE-LR4 and OTU4 applications. It is optically interoperable with Finisar’s existing 10km 100GE CFP modules. Lower power dissipation is a very critical feature for high port-count line cards that utilize the CFP2 form factor.

JDSU highlights 100G technologies

JDSU, a key developer of optical products and test & measurement systems for communications launched new test technology including the 100G CFP 2 Testing System, which JDSU claims to be the world’s first solution for testing next-generation 100G networks with CFP 2 modules.

Furthermore, JDSU’s new 100G Multichannel Test Solution enables design verification of Optical Transport Networks at 32 times the speed of previous testers. The company commented, “By testing multiple Optical Channel Data Units simultaneously instead of by traditional sequential tests, component and system vendors can ensure the key switching capabilities for 100G transmission products.

Also emphasizing the communications sectors transition to 100Gbit/s and above, JDSU presented its 40-100G transmission components and modules, of which the company said, “Modulators and receivers are being shipped in volume to NEMs (nanoelectromechanical systems manufacturers) for high-speed networks that operate at 40G and 100G data rates. JDSU now also offers custom solutions for 40G and 100G modules.”

Modular multi-terabit testing

ID Photonics and Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute used this year’s ECOC exhibition to show their jointly-developed modular test solution that provides engineers with “a comprehensive method of designing and testing future ultra-high capacity network architectures up to 54 Tb/s for the coherent transmission era using various modulation formats and channel configuration.”

The partners’ Modular Multi-Terabit Solution
for Testing Elastic Optical Network Designs enables: multi-terabit testing capability for multi-format, flexible optical transport systems up to 54 Tb/s; up to 272 Gbit/s per carrier and up to 200 DWDM carriers; 16 sychnronized electrical data streams; GUI-based control and turn-key custom systems.

Exfo conclusions

Exfo showcased its PSO-200 Optical Modulation Analyzer, which allows complete characterization of DP-QPSK or DP-16QAM signals up to 1 Tbit/s and beyond. The FTB-85100G CFP-based 100G Ethernet/OTN analyzer was also demonstrated.

François Robitaille, Senior Product Line Manager, at Exfo’s Optical Business Unit gave an overview of this year’s exhibition and conference: “ECOC 2012 has been an interesting show with clearer market trends than ever: 100G is here and now. The industry is definitely getting ready for the next steps: 400G and 1TB, which were the topics of several papers presented at the technical conference and we are starting to see products addressing those requirements on the show floor.

”From a component and module perspective, several companies took advantage of this event to launch their new integrated receivers, coherent modules or 32 GBd modulators. Some of them even announced their second generation modules or instruments for 100G transmission. The 100G market is definitely a multisupplier market now and competition should help reduce prices, which will facilitate customers’ acceptance and increase deployments in 2013.”

About the Author

Matthew Peach is contributing editor to optics.org