News 
March 23, 2023
News
March 23, 2023
Roberto Marcoccia, CEO of EFFECT Photonics, was recently interviewed by Lightwave at OFC23. Click the…
Roberto Marcoccia, CEO of EFFECT Photonics, was recently interviewed by Lightwave at OFC23. Click the video to hear what Roberto had to say about EFFECT Photonics enabling 100G at the network edge.
Insights
March 22, 2023
Artificial intelligence (AI) will have a significant role in making optical networks more scalable, affordable,…
Artificial intelligence (AI) will have a significant role in making optical networks more scalable, affordable, and sustainable. It can gather information from devices across the optical network to identify patterns and make decisions independently without human input. By synergizing with other technologies, such as network function virtualization (NFV), AI can become a centralized management and orchestration network layer. Such a setup can fully automate network provisioning, diagnostics, and management, as shown in the diagram below.
However, artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms are data-hungry. To work optimally, they need information from all network layers and ever-faster data centers to process it quickly. Pluggable optical transceivers thus need to become smarter, relaying more information back to the AI central unit, and faster, enabling increased AI processing.
Optical transceivers are crucial in developing better AI systems by facilitating the rapid, reliable data transmission these systems need to do their jobs. High-speed, high-bandwidth connections are essential to interconnect data centers and supercomputers that host AI systems and allow them to analyze a massive volume of data.
In addition, optical transceivers are essential for facilitating the development of artificial intelligence-based edge computing, which entails relocating compute resources to the network’s periphery. This is essential for facilitating the quick processing of data from Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices like sensors and cameras, which helps minimize latency and increase reaction times.
400 Gbps links are becoming the standard across data center interconnects, but providers are already considering the next steps. LightCounting forecasts significant growth in the shipments of dense-wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) ports with data rates of 600G, 800G, and beyond in the next five years. We discuss these solutions in greater detail in our article about the roadmap to 800G and beyond.
Mobile networks now and in the future will consist of a massive number of devices, software applications, and technologies. Self-managed, zero-touch automated networks will be required to handle all these new devices and use cases. Realizing this full network automation requires two vital components.
These goals require smart optical equipment and components that provide comprehensive telemetry data about their status and the fiber they are connected to. The AI-controlled centralized management and orchestration layer can then use this data for remote management and diagnostics. We discuss this topic further in our previous article on remote provisioning, diagnostics, and management.
For example, a smart optical transceiver that fits this centralized AI-management model should relay data to the AI controller about fiber conditions. Such monitoring is not just limited to finding major faults or cuts in the fiber but also smaller degradations or delays in the fiber that stem from age, increased stress in the link due to increased traffic, and nonlinear optical effects. A transceiver that could relay all this data allows the AI controller to make better decisions about how to route traffic through the network.
After relaying data to the AI management system, a smart pluggable transceiver must also switch parameters to adapt to different use cases and instructions given by the controller.
Let’s look at an example of forward error correction (FEC). FEC makes the coherent link much more tolerant to noise than a direct detect system and enables much longer reach and higher capacity. 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.
A smart transceiver and DSP could switch among different FEC algorithms to adapt to network performance and use cases. 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 transceiver can be remotely reconfigured to use a proprietary FEC standard, the transceiver will be able to handle this upgraded link.
Reconfigurable transceivers can also be beneficial to auto-configure links to deal with specific network conditions, especially in brownfield links. Let’s return to the fiber monitoring subject we discussed in the previous section. A transceiver can 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.
Optical networks will need artificial intelligence and machine learning to scale more efficiently and affordably to handle the increased traffic and connected devices. Conversely, AI systems will also need faster pluggables than before to acquire data and make decisions more quickly. Pluggables that fit this new AI era must be fast, smart, and adapt to multiple use cases and conditions. They will need to scale up to speeds beyond 400G and relay monitoring data back to the AI management layer in the central office. The AI management layer can then program transceiver interfaces from this telemetry data to change parameters and optimize the network.
Tags: 800G, 800G and beyond, adaptation, affordable, AI, artificial intelligence, automation, CloudComputing, data, DataCenter, EFFECT Photonics, FEC, fiber quality, innovation, integration, laser arrays, machine learning, network conditions, network optimization, Networking, optical transceivers, photonic integration, Photonics, physical layer, programmable interface, scalable, sensor data flow, technology, Telecommunications, telemetry data, terabyte, upgrade, virtualization
Insights
March 15, 2023
When it started, the space race was a competition between two superpowers, but now there…
When it started, the space race was a competition between two superpowers, but now there are 90 countries with missions in space.
The prices of space travel have gone down, making it possible for more than just governments to send rockets and satellites into space. Several private companies are now investing in space programs, looking for everything from scientific advances to business opportunities. Some reports estimate more than 10,000 companies in the space industry and around 5,000 investors.
According to The Space Foundation’s 2022 report, the space economy was worth $469 billion in 2021. The report says more spacecraft were launched in the first six months of 2021 than in the first 52 years of space exploration (1957-2009). This growing industry has thus a growing need for technology products across many disciplines, including telecommunications. The space sector will need lighter, more affordable telecommunication systems that also provide increased bandwidth.
This is why EFFECT Photonics sees future opportunities for coherent technology in the space industry. By translating the coherent transmission from fiber communication systems on the ground to free-space optical systems, the space sector can benefit from solutions with more bandwidth capacity and less power consumption than traditional point-to-point microwave links.
One of the major concerns of the space industry is the cost of sending anything into space. Even during the days of NASA’s Space Shuttle program (which featured a reusable shuttle unit), sending a kilogram into space cost tens of thousands of dollars. Over time, more rocket stages have become reusable due to the efforts of companies like SpaceX, reducing these costs to just a few thousand. The figure below shows how the cost of space flight has decreased significantly in the last two decades.
Even though space travel is more affordable than ever, size, weight, and power (SWaP) requirements are still vital in the space industry. After all, shaving off weight or size in the spacecraft means a less expensive launch or perhaps room for more scientific instruments. Meanwhile, less power consumption means less drain on the spacecraft’s energy sources.
Currently, most space missions use bulkier radio frequency communications to send data to and from spacecraft. While radio waves have a proven track record of success in space missions, generating and collecting more mission data requires enhanced communications capabilities. Besides, radiofrequency equipment can often generate a lot of heat, requiring more energy to cool the system.
Decreasing SWaP requirements can be achieved with more photonics and miniaturization. Transmitting data with light will usually dissipate less than heat than transmission with electrical signals and radio waves. These leads to smaller, lighter communication systems that require less power to run.
These SWaP advantages come alongside the increased transmission speeds. After all, coherent optical communications can increase link capacities to spacecraft and satellites by 10 to 100 times that of radio frequency systems.
While integrated photonics can boost space communications by lowering the payload, it must overcome the obstacles of a harsh space environment, which include radiation hardness, an extreme operational temperature range, and vacuum conditions.
| Mission Type | Temperature Range |
|---|---|
| Pressurized Module | +18.3 ºC to 26.7 °C |
| Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) | -65 ºC to +125 °C |
| Geosynchronous Equatorial Orbit (GEO) | -196 ºC to +128 °C |
| Trans-Atmospheric Vehicle | -200 ºC to +260 ºC |
| Lunar Surface | -171 ºC to +111 ºC |
| Martian Surface | -143 ºC to +27 ºC |
The values in Table 1 show the unmanaged environmental temperatures in different space environments. In a temperature-managed area, these would decrease significantly for electronics and optics systems, perhaps by as much as half. Despite this management, the equipment would still need to deal with some extreme temperature values.
Fortunately, a substantial body of knowledge exists to make integrated photonics compatible with space environments. After all, photonic integrated circuits (PICs) use similar materials to their electronic counterparts, which have already been space qualified in many implementations.
Much research has gone into overcoming the challenges of packaging PICs with electronics and optical fibers for these space environments, which must include hermetic seals and avoid epoxies. Commercial solutions, such as those offered by PHIX Photonics Assembly, Technobis IPS, and the PIXAPP Photonic Packaging Pilot Line, are now available.
Whenever you want to send data from point A to B, photonics is usually the most efficient way of doing it, be it over fiber or free space.
Offering optical communication systems in a small integrated package that can resist the required environmental conditions will significantly benefit the space sector and its need to minimize SWaP requirements. These optical systems can increase their transmission capacity with the coherent optical transmission used in fiber optics. Furthermore, by leveraging the assembly and packaging structure of electronics for the space sector, photonics can also provide the systems with the ruggedness required to live in space.
Tags: certification, coherent, electronics, existing, fast, growing, heat dissipation, miniaturization, Optical Communication, Photonics, power consumption, size, space, space sector, speed, SWAP, temperature, weight
News
March 6, 2023
Industry Leaders Join Forces to Meet the Next Generation Needs of Service Providers, 5G Telecom…
Industry Leaders Join Forces to Meet the Next Generation Needs of Service Providers, 5G Telecom and Fixed Access Operators
EINDHOVEN, The Netherlands and SAN JOSE, Calif.—Credo (NASDAQ:CRDO) and EFFECT Photonics today announced plans to collaborate on the development of coherent Digital Signal Processor (DSP) merchant ICs, featuring industry-leading power dissipation and performance. The DSPs are expected to deliver the capacity and reach needed to meet the explosive demands for connectivity and bandwidth and enable cost-effective network upgrades over existing physical fiber infrastructure. These merchant silicon offerings have the added benefit of giving customers the flexibility to choose from a variety of transceiver suppliers.
The two companies will work together to develop new coherent DSP products featuring EFFECT Photonics’ coherent DSP technology and Forward Error Correction (FEC), combined with Credo’s high-speed SerDes, I/Os, Analog to Digital Converters (ADCs), and Digital to Analog Converters (DACs). Credo will manufacture and manage the sales and supply channels of the co-developed merchant ICs, and provide complete design services and customer support.
The first products will target 100G ZR and 100G ZR+ applications. The products will work within the popular QSFP28 optical module’s ultralow 5W power envelope and extend network reach well beyond 80km to support advanced application requirements. These products will target new buildouts and the imminent 10G upgrade cycle to 100G for service providers, 5G telecom and fixed-access operators.
Alan Weckel, Founder and Technology Analyst at 650 Group stated, “Merchant solutions will help drive down the cost, and with the installed base of 10G ports in excess of 13M ports, there is a significant installed base that needs to upgrade to 100G to support new applications and traffic patterns, plus potential new market opportunities that coherent DSPs can open up in service provider, cloud, and enterprise edge networks.”
“Coherent technologies are gaining importance as they improve spectral efficiency and increase data throughput. Historically, coherent solutions have been mostly deployed for very long distances due to their high power and high cost,” said Scott Feller, Vice President of Marketing at Credo. “Our first collaboration with EFFECT Photonics will allow us to deliver capabilities that fit into the power envelopes of the most commonly used transceivers at a competitive price, providing our large volume customers with a refined solution that will seamlessly integrate into their existing access and edge infrastructure to address the dramatic bandwidth growth at the network edge.”
“Our field-proven coherent technology and Credo’s high-performance, power-efficient connectivity solutions and semiconductor manufacturing expertise provide a potent combination that we believe could truly revolutionize the network edge and access interconnect market,” said Harald Graber, Chief Commercial Officer at EFFECT Photonics. “The clear market need for this technology presents a truly exciting opportunity for both of our companies.”
The joint solutions will offer numerous benefits, including high performance, small size, excellent energy efficiency and cost-efficient production.
DSP Feature Set/Advantages:
About Credo
Our mission is to deliver high-speed solutions to break bandwidth barriers on every wired connection in the data infrastructure market. Credo is an innovator in providing secure, high-speed connectivity solutions that deliver improved power and cost efficiency as data rates and corresponding bandwidth requirements increase exponentially throughout the data infrastructure market. Our innovations ease system bandwidth bottlenecks while simultaneously improving on power, security and reliability. Our connectivity solutions are optimized for optical and electrical Ethernet applications, including the emerging 100G (or Gigabits per second), 200G, 400G and 800G port markets. Our products are based on our proprietary Serializer/Deserializer (SerDes) and Digital Signal Processor (DSP) technologies. Our product families include integrated circuits (ICs), Active Electrical Cables (AECs) and SerDes Chiplets. Our intellectual property (IP) solutions consist primarily of SerDes IP licensing.
For more information, please visit: https://www.credosemi.com. Follow Credo on LinkedIn and Twitter.
About EFFECT Photonics
Where Light Meets Digital – EFFECT Photonics is a highly vertically integrated, independent optical systems company addressing the need for high-performance, affordable optic solutions driven by the ever-increasing demand for bandwidth and faster data transfer capabilities. Using our field-proven digital signal processing and forward error correction technology and ultra-pure light sources, we offer compact form factors with seamless integration, cost efficiency, low power, and security of supply. By leveraging established microelectronics ecosystems, we aim to make our products affordable and available in high volumes to address the challenges in 5G and beyond, access-ready coherent solutions, and cloud and cloud edge services.
For more information, please visit: https://www.effectphotonics.com. Follow EFFECT Photonics on LinkedIn and Twitter.
# # #
Media Contacts:
Diane Vanasse
Credo
Diane.vanasse@credosemi.com
Colleen Cronin
EFFECT Photonics
colleencronin@effectphotonics.com
News
March 3, 2023
Eindhoven, The Netherlands — EFFECT Photonics, a leading developer of highly integrated optical solutions, has…
Eindhoven, The Netherlands — EFFECT Photonics, a leading developer of highly integrated optical solutions, has secured an additional $40 million in funding from a group of investors led by Invest-NL and Innovation Industries, along with other existing investors.
The new investment enables the company to accelerate product development and fuel go-to-market initiatives, specifically those related to its integrated coherent optical product portfolio and solutions that meet the industry need for disaggregation of the key components for the growing needs of coherent optical interfaces.
“We’re thankful to Invest-NL, Innovation Industries, and our other existing investors for their continued support and confidence in EFFECT Photonics mission and products,” said Roberto Marcoccia, CEO, EFFECT Photonics. “This investment positions us well to advance our portfolio of integrated optic solutions that will reshape the future of communications and positively disrupt the status quo.”
Gert-Jan Vaessen, Fund Manager Deep Tech Fund at Invest-NL – “Invest-NL’s Deep Tech Fund is established to support companies with innovative, complex technologies focusing on future societal challenges. Our investment in EFFECT Photonics is within that goal. We are very happy to support our existing deep tech portfolio company EFFECT Photonics, together with the other shareholders, for further growth. Management is well-focused on future developments and has positioned EFFECT Photonics as a tier-one business partner.”
“Innovation Industries is excited to offer our continued support of EFFECT Photonics. We are impressed by the company’s plans for future growth and innovative product portfolio, which is forging new grounds in offering the lowest power per bit,” said Nard Sintenie, Partner, Innovation Industries.
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Where Light Meets Digital – EFFECT Photonics is a highly vertically integrated, independent optical systems company addressing the need for high-performance, affordable optic solutions driven by the ever-increasing demand for bandwidth and faster data transfer capabilities. Using our field-proven digital signal processing and forward error correction technologies and ultra-pure light sources, we offer compact form factor solutions with seamless integration, cost efficiency, low power, and security of supply. By leveraging established microelectronics ecosystems, we aim to make our products affordable and available in high volumes to address the challenges in 5G and beyond, access-ready coherent solutions, and cloud and cloud edge services. For more information, please visit: www.effectphotonics.com. Follow EFFECT Photonics on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Media Contact:
Colleen Cronin
EFFECT Photonics
colleencronin@effectphotonics.com
Insights
February 28, 2023
Last year, EFFECT Photonics announced the acquisition of the coherent optical digital signal processing (DSP)…
Last year, EFFECT Photonics announced the acquisition of the coherent optical digital signal processing (DSP) and forward error correction (FEC) business unit from the global communications company Viasat Inc. This also meant welcoming to the EFFECT Photonics family a new engineering team who will continue to work in the Cleveland area.
As EFFECT Photonics expands its influence into the American Midwest, it is interesting to dive deeper into Cleveland’s history with industry and technology. Cleveland has enjoyed a long story as a Midwest industrial hub, and as these traditional industries have declined, it is evolving into one of the high-tech hubs of the region.
Cleveland’s industrial sector expanded significantly in the 19th century because of the city’s proximity to several essential resources and transportation routes: coal and iron ore deposits, the Ohio and Erie Canal, and the Lake Erie railroad. For example, several steel mills, such as the Cleveland Rolling Mill Company and the Cleveland Iron and Steel Company, emerged because of the city’s proximity to Lake Erie, facilitating the transportation of raw materials and goods.
Building on the emerging iron and steel industries, heavy equipment production also found a home in Cleveland. Steam engines, railroad equipment, and other forms of heavy machinery were all manufactured in great quantities in the city.
Cleveland saw another massive boost to its industrial hub status with the birth of the Standard Oil Company in 1870. At the peak of its power, Standard Oil was the largest petroleum company in the world, and its success made its founder and head, John D. Rockefeller, one of the wealthiest men of all time. This history with petroleum also led to the emergence of Cleveland’s chemicals and materials industry.
Many immigrants moved to Cleveland, searching for work in these expanding industries, contributing to the city’s rapid population boom. This growth also prompted the development of new infrastructure like roads, railways and bridges to accommodate the influx of people.
Several important electrical and mechanical equipment manufacturers, including the Bendix Corporation, the White Motor Company, and the Western Electric Company (which supplied equipment to the US Bell System), also established their headquarters in or around Cleveland in the late 19th and early 20th century.
In the second half of the 20th century, Cleveland’s traditional industries, such as steel and manufacturing in Cleveland began to collapse. As was the case in many other great American manufacturing centers, automation, globalization, and other socioeconomic shifts all had a role in this decline. The demise of Cleveland’s core industries was a significant setback, but the city has made substantial efforts in recent years to diversify its economy and grow in new technology and healthcare areas.
For example, the Cleveland Clinic is one of the leading US academic medical centers, with pioneering medical breakthroughs such as the first coronary artery bypass surgery and the first face transplant in the United States. Institutions like theirs or the University Hospitals help establish Cleveland as a center for healthcare innovation.
Cleveland is also trying to evolve as a high-tech hub that attracts new workers and companies, especially in software development. Companies are attracted by the low office leasing and other operating costs, while the affordable living costs attract workers. As reported by the real estate firm CBRE, Cleveland’s tech workforce grew by 25 percent between 2016 and 2021, which was significantly above the national average of 12.8 percent.
As Cleveland’s history as a tech hub continues, EFFECT Photonics is excited to join this emerging tech environment. Our new DSP team will find its new home in the Wagner Awning building in the Tremont neighborhood of Cleveland’s West Side.
This building was erected in 1895 and hosted a sewing factory that manufactured everything from tents and flotation devices for American soldiers and marines to awnings for Cleveland buildings. When the Ohio Awning company announced its relocation in 2015, this historic building began a redevelopment process to become a new office and apartment space.
EFFECT Photonics is proud to become a part of Cleveland’s rich and varied history with industry and technology. We hope our work can help develop this city further as a tech hub and attract more innovators and inventors to Cleveland.
Tags: digital signal processing (DSP), EFFECT Photonics, forward error correction (FEC), high-tech hub, industrial history, Integrated Photonics, Ohio Awning Company, Photonics, Tremont neighborhood, Viasat Inc., Wagner Awning building
Insights
February 23, 2023
Several applications in the optical network edge would benefit from upgrading from 10G to 100G…
Several applications in the optical network edge would benefit from upgrading from 10G to 100G DWDM or from 100G grey to 100G DWDM optics:
The 100G coherent pluggables for these applications will have very low power consumption (less than 6 Watts) and be deployed in uncontrolled environments. To enable this next generation of coherent pluggables, the next generation of tunable lasers needs enhanced optical and electronic integration, more configurability so that users can optimize their pluggable footprint and power consumption, and the leveraging of electronic ecosystems.
Over 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.
Integration also has a major impact on power consumption, since smaller, highly-integrated lasers usually consume less power than bulkier lasers with more discrete components. Making the laser smaller and more integrated means that the light inside the chip will travel a smaller distance and therefore accumulate fewer optical losses.
Reducing the footprint of tunable lasers in the future will need even greater integration of their component 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 important aspect of optimizing pluggable module footprint and power consumption is allowing transceiver developers to mix and match their transceiver building blocks.
Let’s discuss an example of such configurability. The traditional ITLA in transceivers contains the temperature control driver and power converter functions. However, the main transceiver board can usually provide these functions too.
A setup in which the main board performs these driver and converter functions would avoid the need for redundant elements in both the main board and tunable laser. Furthermore, it would give the transceiver developer more freedom to choose the power converter and driver blocks that best fit their footprint and power consumption requirements.
Such configurability will be particularly useful in the context of the new generation of 100G coherent pluggables. After, these 100G pluggables must fit tunable lasers, digital signal processors, and optical engines in a QSFP28 form factor that is slightly smaller than the QSFP-DD size used for 400G transceiver.
The photonics production chain must be increasingly automated and standardized to save costs and increase accessibility. To achieve this goal, it is helpful to study established practices in the fields of electronics packaging, assembly, and testing.
By using BGA-style packaging or flip-chip bonding techniques that are common now in electronics packaging or passive optical fiber alignment, photonics packaging can also become more affordable and accessible. You can read more about these methods in our article about leveraging electronic ecosystems in photonics.
These kinds of packaging methods not only improve the scalability (and therefore cost) of laser production, but they can also further reduce the size of the laser.
Tunable lasers for coherent pluggable transceivers face the complex problem of maintaining a good enough performance while moving to smaller footprints, lower cost, and lower power consumption. Within a decade, the industry moved from the original integrable tunable laser assembly (ITLA) module to micro-ITLAs and then nano-ITLAs. Each generation had roughly half the footprint of the previous one.
However, the need for 100G coherent pluggables for the network edge imposes even tighter footprint and power consumption constraints on tunable lasers. Increased integration, more configurability of the laser and transceiver building blocks, and the leveraging of electronic will help tunable lasers get smaller and more power-efficient to enable these new application cases in edge and access networks.
Tags: automation, cost, efficiency, energy efficient, nano ITLA, optimization, power, size, smaller, testing, wavelength locker News
February 22, 2023
-New pTLA to offer industry-best combination of size, affordability, and performance to meet the demand…
-New pTLA to offer industry-best combination of size, affordability, and performance to meet the demand for 100G coherent at the edge
EINDHOVEN, The Netherlands—EFFECT Photonics, a leading developer of highly integrated optical solutions, announced today the development of a new Pico Tunable Laser Assembly (pTLA) to address the growing demand for 100G coherent transceivers in access networks. Tunable lasers are a core component of optical systems enabling dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) which allows network operators to expand their network capacity without expanding the existing fiber infrastructure. Purposely designed for the optical network edge, EFFECT Photonics new pTLA supports both commercial- and industrial-temperature (C-temp and I-temp) operating ranges and offers an ideal combination of power, cost, and size to enable a transceiver form-factors to upgrade the existing infrastructure to a scalable 100 Gbps coherent solution.
According to a recent Heavy Reading survey, 75% of operators believe that 100G coherent pluggable optics will be used extensively in their edge and access evolution strategy. However, market adoption has yet to materialize since affordable and power-efficient 100ZR-based products are currently not available due to stringent size and power consumption requirements that cannot be fulfilled by today’s tunable laser solutions. Designed specifically to address the 100G coherent network edge, EFFECT Photonics’ pTLA will allow coherent pluggables to be deployed more easily and cost effectively in the access domain and will feature optimal laser performance, size and power consumption for a standard QSFP28 form-factor. Furthermore, EFFECT Photonics’ new pTLA utilizes the existing microelectronics ecosystem to allow manufacturing at scale as well as complementary coherent products and services, such as DSPs for those providers in need of a complete transceiver solution.
“Today’s operators need an network edge aggregation strategy that offers the best combination of capacity, cost-effectiveness, and performance to evolve network access effectively, and 100G coherent pluggable optics offer just that, EFFECT Photonics’ new Pico Tunable Laser Assembly will be the only purpose designed tunable laser assembly today to serve this emerging market. helping to easily scale up network edge aggregation capacity and benefit from coherent technology.”
Roberto Marcoccia, CEO, EFFECT Photonics
Where Light Meets Digital – EFFECT Photonics is a highly vertically integrated, independent optical systems company addressing the need for high-performance, affordable optic solutions driven by the ever-increasing demand for bandwidth and faster data transfer capabilities.
Using our proprietary digital signal processing and forward error correction technology and ultra-pure light sources, we offer compact form factors with seamless integration, cost efficiency, low power, and security of supply. By leveraging established microelectronics ecosystems, we aim to make our products affordable and available in high volumes to address the challenges in 5G and beyond, access-ready coherent solutions, and cloud and cloud edge services.
For more information, please visit: www.effectphotonics.com. Follow EFFECT Photonics on LinkedIn and Twitter.
To read the Simplified Chinese version click here.
To read the Traditional Chinese version click here.
To read the Japanese version click here.
To read the Korean version click here.
Media Contact:
Colleen Cronin
EFFECT Photonics
colleencronin@effectphotonics.com
Insights
February 16, 2023
Operators are strongly interested in 100G pluggables that can house tunable coherent optics in compact,…
Operators are strongly interested in 100G pluggables that can house tunable coherent optics in compact, low-power form factors like QSFP28. 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.
These new 100G coherent pluggables will have very low power consumption (less than six Watts) and will be deployed in uncontrolled environments, imposing new demands on coherent digital signal processors (DSPs). To enable this next generation of coherent pluggables in the network edge, the next generation of DSPs needs ultra-low power consumption, co-designing with the optical engine, and industrial hardening.
Several applications in the network edge can benefit from upgrading their existing 10G DWDM, or 100G grey links into 100G DWDM, such as the aggregation of fixed and mobile access networks and 100G data center interconnects for enterprises. However, network providers have often chosen to stick to their 10G links because the existing 100G solutions do not check all the required boxes.
100G direct detect pluggables have a more limited reach and are not always compatible with DWDM systems. “Scaled down” coherent 400ZR solutions have the required reach and tunability, but they are too expensive and power-hungry for edge applications. Besides, the ports in small to medium IP routers used in edge deployments often do not support QSFP-DD modules commonly used in 400ZR but QSFP28 modules.
The QSFP28 form factor imposes tighter footprint and power consumption constraints on coherent technologies compared to QSFP-DD modules. QSFP28 is slightly smaller, and most importantly, it can handle at most a 6-Watt power consumption, in contrast with the typical 15-Watt consumption of QSFP-DD modules in 400ZR links. Fortunately, the industry is moving towards a proper 100ZR solution in the QSFP28 form factor that balances performance, footprint, and power consumption requirements for the network edge.
These power requirements also impact DSP power consumption. DSPs constitute roughly 50% of coherent transceiver power consumption, so a DSP optimized for the network edge 100G use cases should aim to consume at most 2.5 to 3 Watts of power.
Achieving this ambitious power target will require scaling down performance in some areas and designing smartly in others. Let’s discuss a few examples below.
Traditionally, coherent devices have resided in the controlled settings of data center machine rooms or network provider equipment rooms. These rooms have active temperature control, cooling systems, dust and particle filters, airlocks, and humidity control. In such a setting, pluggable transceivers must operate within the so-called commercial temperature range (c-temp) from 0 to 70ºC.
On the other hand, the network edge often involves uncontrolled settings outdoors at the whims of Mother Nature. It might be at the top of an antenna, on mountain ranges, within traffic tunnels, or in Northern Europe’s severe winters. For these outdoor settings, transceivers should operate in the industrial temperature range (I-temp) from -40 to 85ºC. Higher altitude deployments provide additional challenges too. Because the air gets thinner, networking equipment cooling mechanisms become less effective, and the device cannot withstand casing temperatures as high as they can at sea level.
The network edge could benefit from switching their existing direct detect or grey links to 100G DWDM coherent. However, the industry needs more affordable and power-efficient transceivers and DSPs specifically designed for coherent 100G transmission in edge and access networks. By realizing DSPs co-designed with the optics, adjusted for reduced power consumption, and industrially hardened, the network edge will have coherent DSP and transceiver products adapted to their needs.
Tags: 100ZR, access network, co-design, controlled, edge, fit for platform DSP, InP, low power, pluggables, power consumption, power conversion, QSFP 28, QSFP-DD
10 February 2023
8:00 am - 9:00 am
Tim Koene - CTO
In the past months, EFFECT Photonics has gone through big changes in operations and manufacture to enhance our position for success, playing a critical role in Europe’s green and digital transformation and in our photonics ecosystem.
Innovation Origins interviews our CTO Tim Koene to learn more about EFFECT Photonics’ next exciting steps.
Click the website link for the full article from Innovation Origins.
Tags: Innovation Origins
07 March 2023 - 09 March 2023
8:00 am - 5:00 pm
EFFECT Photonics #2423
Join EFFECT Photonics from March 7 to 9, 2023 at OFC in San Diego, California, the world’s largest event for optical networking and communications, to discover firsthand how our technology is transforming where light meets digital. Visit Booth #2423 to learn how EFFECT Photonics’ full portfolio of optical building blocks are enabling 100G coherent to the network edge and next-generation applications.
Build Your Own 100G ZR Coherent Module
At this year’s OFC, see how easy and affordable it can be to upgrade existing 10G links to a more scalable 100G coherent solution! Try your hand at constructing a 100G ZR coherent module specifically designed for the network edge utilizing various optical building blocks including tunable lasers, DSPs and optical subassemblies.
Tune Your Own PIC (Photonic Integrated Circuit)
Be sure to stop by Booth #2423 to tune your own PIC with EFFECT Photonics technology. In this interactive and dynamic demonstration, participants can explore first-hand the power of EFFECT Photonics solutions utilizing various parameters and product configurations.
Our experts are also available to discuss customer needs and how EFFECT Photonics might be able to assist. To schedule a meeting, please email marketing@effectphotonics.com
Tags: 100 ZR, 100G, 100gcoherent, access, access networks, bringing100Gtoedge, cloud, cloudedge, coherent, coherentoptics, datacenters, DSP, DSPs, EFFECT Photonics, Integrated Photonics, networkedge, ofc23, opticcommunications, Optics, photonic integration, Photonics, PIC, tunablelasers, wherelightmeetsdigital
Insights
February 8, 2023
Coherent optical transmission has been crucial in addressing network operator problems for the last decade. In this time, coherent technology has expanded from a solution reserved only for premium long-distance links to one that impacts data center interconnects, metro, and access networks…
Coherent optical transmission has been crucial in addressing network operator problems for the last decade. In this time, coherent technology has expanded from a solution reserved only for premium long-distance links to one that impacts data center interconnects, metro, and access networks, as explained in the video below.
The development of the 400ZR standard by the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) proved to be a milestone in this regard. It was the result of several years of progress in electronic and photonic integration that enabled the miniaturization of 400G coherent systems into smaller pluggable form factors. With small enough modules to pack a router faceplate densely, the datacom sector could profit from an ideal solution for high-capacity data center interconnects. Telecom operators wanted to implement a similar solution in their metro links, so they combined the Open ROADM standardization initiative with the 400ZR initiative to develop the OpenZR+ agreement that better fits their use cases.
This article will elaborate on these standardization projects—400ZR, OpenROADM, and OpenZR+—and explain what use cases each was designed to tackle.
To cope with growing bandwidth demands, providers wanted to implement the concept of IP over DWDM (IPoDWDM), in which tunable optics are integrated into the router. This integration eliminates the optical transponder shelf and the optics between the routers and DWDM systems, reducing the network capital expenditure (CAPEX). This is shown in the figure below.
However, widely deploying IPoDWDM with coherent optics forced providers to face a router faceplate trade-off. Since DWDM modules have traditionally been much larger than the client optics, plugging DWDM modules into the router required sacrificing roughly half of the costly router faceplate capacity. This was unacceptable for datacom and telecom providers, who approached their suppliers and the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) about the need to develop a compact and interoperable coherent solution that addressed this trade-off.
These discussions and technology development led the OIF to publish the 400ZR implementation agreement in 2020. 400ZR specifies a (relatively) low-cost and interoperable 400 Gigabit coherent interface for a link with a single optical wavelength, using a double-polarization, 16-state quadrature amplitude modulation scheme (DP-16QAM). This modulation scheme uses sixteen different constellation points that arise from combining four different intensity levels and four phases. It doubles the usual 16-QAM transmission capacity by encoding information in two different polarizations of light.
The agreement specified a link reach of 80 kilometers without amplification and 120 kilometers with amplification. For forward error correction (FEC), the 400ZR standard supports a concatenated FEC (CFEC) method. CFEC combines inner and outer FEC codes to enhance the performance compared to a standard FEC code.
The 400ZR agreement does not specify a particular size or type of module, but its specifications targeted a footprint and power consumption that could fit in smaller modules such as the Quad Small Form-Factor Pluggable Double-Density (QSFP-DD) and Octal-Small Form-Factor Pluggable (OSFP). These form factors are small enough to provide the faceplate density that telecom and especially datacom operators need in their system architectures. So even if we often associate the 400ZR standard with QSFP-DD, other form factors, such as CFP2, can be used.
In parallel with the 400ZR standardization efforts, telecom network operators had a different ongoing discussion.
Reconfigurable Optical Add-Drop Multiplexers (ROADMs) were a game-changer for optical communications when they entered the market in the 2000s. Before this technology, optical networks featured inefficient fixed routes and could not adapt to changes in traffic and demand. ROADMs allowed operators to remotely provision and manage their wavelength channels and bandwidth without redesigning the physical network infrastructure.
However, ROADMs were proprietary hardware with proprietary software. Changing the proprietary ROADM platform needed extensive testing and a lengthy integration process, so operators were usually reluctant to look for other platform alternatives. Besides, ROADMs still had several fixed, pre-defined elements that could have been configurable through open interfaces. This environment led to reduced competition and innovation in the ROADM space.
These trends drove the launch of the Open ROADM project in 2016 and the release of their first Multi-Source Agreement in 2017. The project aimed to disaggregate and open up these traditionally proprietary ROADM systems and make their provisioning and control more centralized through technologies such as software-defined networks (SDNs, explained in the diagram below).
The Open ROADM project defined three disaggregated functions (pluggable optics, transponder, and ROADM), all controlled through an open standards-based API that could be accessed through an SDN controller. It defined 100G-400G interfaces for both Ethernet and Optical Transport Networking (OTN) protocols with a link reach of up to 500km. It also defined a stronger FEC algorithm called open FEC (oFEC) to support this reach. oFEC provides a greater enhancement than CFEC at the cost of more overhead and energy.
The 400ZR agreement was primarily focused on addressing the needs of large-scale data center operators and their suppliers.
While it had some usefulness for telecom network operators, their transport network links usually span several hundreds of kilometers, so the interface and module power consumption defined in the 400ZR agreement could not handle such an extended reach. Besides, network operators needed extra flexibility when defining the transmission rate and the modulation type of their links.
Therefore, soon after the publication of the 400ZR agreement, the OpenZR+ Multi-Source Agreement (MSA) was published in September 2020. As the diagram below explains, this agreement can be seen as a combination of the 400ZR and Open ROADM standardization efforts.
To better fit the telecom use cases of regional and long-haul transport links, OpenZR+ added a few changes to improve the link reach and flexibility over 400ZR:
These changes allow QSFP-DD and OSFP modules to reach link lengths of up to 480 km (with optical amplifiers) at a 400G data rate. However, the FEC and dispersion compensation improvements that enable this extended reach come at the price of increased energy consumption. While the 400ZR standard targets a power consumption of 15 Watts, OpenZR+ standards aim for a power consumption of up to 20 Watts.
If operators need more performance, distances above 500 km, and support for OTN traffic (400ZR and OpenZR+ only support Ethernet), they must still use proprietary solutions, which are informally called 400ZR+. These 400ZR+ solutions feature larger module sizes (CFP2), higher performance proprietary FEC, and higher launch powers to achieve longer reach. These more powerful features come at the cost of even more power consumption, which can go up to 25 Watts.
The following table summarizes the use cases and characteristics of the approaches discussed in the article: 400ZR, Open ROADM, OpenZR+, and 400ZR+.
| Technology | 400ZR | Open ROADM | OpenZR+ | 400ZR+ Proprietary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Target Application | Edge Data Center Interconnects | Carrier ROADM Mesh Networks | Metro/Regional Carrier and Data Center Interconnects | Long-Haul Carrier |
| Target Reach @ 400G | 120 km (amplified) | 500 km (amplified) | 480km (amplified) | 1000 km (amplified) |
| Target Power Consumption | Up to 15 W | Up to 25 W | Up to 20 W | Up to 25W |
| Typical Module Option | QSFP-DD/OSFP | CFP2 | QSFP-DD/OSFP | CFP2 |
| Client Interface | 400G Ethernet | 100-400G Ethernet and OTN | 100-400G Ethernet (Multi-rate) | 100-400G Ethernet and OTN |
| Modulation Scheme | 16QAM | QPSK, 8QAM, 16QAM | QPSK, 8QAM, 16QAM | QPSK, 8QAM, 16QAM |
| Forward Error Correction | CFEC | oFEC | oFEC | Proprietary |
| Standards / MSA | OIF | Open ROADM MSA | OpenZR+ MSA | Proprietary |
400ZR is an agreement primarily focused on the needs of data center interconnects across distances of 80 – 120 kilometers. On the other hand, OpenROADM and OpenZR+ focused on addressing the needs of telecom carrier links, supporting link lengths of up to 500 km. These differences in reach are also reflected in the power consumption specs and the module form factors typically used. The 400ZR and OpenZR+ standards can only handle Ethernet traffic, while the Open ROADM and 400ZR+ solutions can handle both Ethernet and OTN traffic.
Tags: 400ZR, Data center, demand, disaggregation, extend, fiber, interoperable, Open ROADM, power, size, ZR+
Insights
February 1, 2023
Precision farming is essential in a world with over 10 billion people by 2050 and…
Precision farming is essential in a world with over 10 billion people by 2050 and a food demand that is expanding at an exponential pace. The 2019 World Resources Report from the World Economic Forum warns that at the current level of food production efficiency, feeding the world in 2050 would require “clearing most of the world’s remaining forests, wiping out thousands more species, and releasing enough greenhouse gas emissions to exceed the 1.5°C and 2°C warming targets enshrined in the Paris Agreement – even if emissions from all other human activities were entirely eliminated.”
Technology can help the agrifood industry improve efficiency and meet these demands by combining robotics, machine vision, and small sensors to precisely and automatically determine the care needed by plants and animals in our food supply chain. This approach helps control and optimize food production, resulting in more sustainable crops, higher yields, and safer food.
Sensors based on integrated photonics can enable many of these precision farming applications. Photonic chips are lighter and smaller than other solutions so they can be deployed more easily in these agricultural use cases. The following article will provide examples of how integrated photonics and optical technology can add value to the agriculture and food industries.
The Netherlands is such a small country that if it were a US state, it would be among the ten smallest states, with a land area between West Virginia and Maryland. Despite its size, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) ranked the Netherlands as the second largest exporter of food in the world by revenue in 2020, only behind the Americans and ahead of countries like Germany, China, or Brazil. These nations have tens or hundreds of times more arable land than the Dutch. Technology is a significant reason for this achievement, and the Dutch are arguably the most developed nation in the world regarding precision farming.
The hub of Dutch agrifood research and development is called the Food Valley, centered in the municipality of Wageningen in Gelderland province. In this area, many public and private R&D initiatives are carried out jointly with Wageningen University, a world-renowned leader in agricultural research.
When interviewed last year, Harrij Schmeitz, Director of the Fruit Tech Campus in Geldermalsen, mentions the example of a local fruit supplier called Fruitmasters. They employ basic cameras to snap 140 photographs of each apple that travels through the sorting conveyor, all within a few milliseconds. These photographs are used to automatically create a 3D model and help the conveyor line filter out the rotten apples before they are packaged for customers. This process was done manually in the past, so this new 3D mapping technology significantly improves efficiency.
These techniques are not just constrained to Gelderland, of course. Jacob van den Borne is a potato farmer from Reusel in the province of North Brabant, roughly a half-hour drive from EFFECT Photonics’ Eindhoven headquarters. Van den Borne’s farm includes self-driving AVR harvesters (shown in the video below), and he has been using drones in his farms since 2011 to photograph his fields and study the soil quality and farming yield.
The drone pictures are used to create maps of the fields, which then inform farming decisions. Van den Borne can study the status of the soil before farming, but even after crops have sprouted, he can study which parts of the field are doing poorly and need more fertilization. These measures prevent food waste and the overuse of fertilizer and pesticides. For example, Van den Borne’s farms have eliminated pesticide chemicals in their greenhouses while boosting their yield. The global average yield of potatoes per acre is around nine tons, but his farms yield more than 20 tons per acre!
If you want to know more about Van den Borne and his use of technology and data, you can read this article.
Artificial lighting is a frequent requirement of indoor plant production facilities to increase production and improve crop quality. Growers are turning to LED lighting because it is more efficient than traditional incandescent or fluorescent systems at converting electricity to light. LED lights are made through similar semiconductor manufacturing processes to photonics chips.
LED lighting also provides a greater variety of colors than the usual yellow/orange glow. This technology allows gardeners to pick colors that match each plant’s demands from seedlings through cultivation, unlike high-pressure sodium or other traditional lighting systems. Different colors of visible light create different chlorophyll types in plants, so LED lights can be set to specific colors to provide the best chlorophyll for each development stage.
For example, suppose you roam around the Westland municipality of the Netherlands. You might occasionally catch a purple glow in the night skies, which has nothing to do with UFOs or aliens wanting to abduct you. As explained by Professor Leo Marcelis of Wageningen University (see the above video), researchers have found that red light is very good for plant growth, and mixing it with five to ten percent blue light gives even better results. Red and blue are also the most energy-efficient colors for LEDs, which helps reduce energy consumption even more. As a result, the farmers can save on light and energy use while the environment profits too.
Modern farmers like Jacob van den Borne collect a large quantity of sensor data, which allows them to plan and learn how to provide plants with the perfect amount of water, light, and nutrients at the proper moment. Farmers can use these resources more efficiently and without waste thanks to this sensor information.
For example, Van den Borne uses wireless, Internet-of-Things sensors from companies like Sensoterra (video below) to gauge the soil’s water level. As we speak, researchers in the OnePlanet Research Center, a collaboration including the Imec R&D organization and Wageningen University, are developing nitrogen sensors that run on optical chips and can help keep nitrogen emissions in check.
These sensors will be connected to local servers and the internet for faster data transfer, so many of the issues and photonics solutions discussed in previous articles about the cloud edge and access networks are also relevant for agrifood sensors. Thus, improving optical communication networks will also impact the agrifood industry positively.
In a future of efficient high-tech and precision farming, optics and photonics will play an increasingly important role.
Optical sensors on a chip can be fast, accurate, small, and efficient. They will provide food producers with plenty of data to optimize their production processes and monitor the environmental impact of food production. Novel lighting methods can reduce the energy consumption of greenhouses and other indoor plant facilities. Meanwhile, photonics will also be vital to improving the capacity of the communications networks that these sensors run in.
With photonics-enabled precision processes, the agrifood industry can improve yields and supply, optimize resource use, reduce waste throughout the value chain, and minimize environmental impact.
Tags: atmosphere, demand, emissions, energy consumption, environment, future, high tech farming, high volume, Integrated Photonics, population growth, Precision agriculture, precision farming, process, resource, sensors, supply, waste
07 February 2023
11:00 am - 12:30 pm
Vladi Veljanovski
The deployment of pluggable coherent optical modules has enabled service providers to re-architect their DCI…
The deployment of pluggable coherent optical modules has enabled service providers to re-architect their DCI and metro optical networks. These modules can be plugged directly into switches and routers, removing the need for dedicated optical transport systems and enabling the transport of IP traffic directly over DWDM with the use of open line systems (IPoDWDM). The same 7nm DSPs and optics are used in 400ZR modules for links up to 120km and ZR+ modules for links of 600km and beyond. The development of 5nm and 3nm DSPs is enabling a new generation of pluggable modules that will support enhanced 400G performance and reach, 800G performance, including 800ZR, and 100G modules designed for the edge of the network.
This session will investigate the benefits already delivered by using coherent pluggable modules and the new opportunities being enabled by the latest developments. Topics will include: The current pluggable coherent landscape What we have learned from 400G coherent pluggable deployments Technology developments for coherent pluggables Where next: cost effective 100G, enhanced 400G, 800G and beyond.
Insights
January 25, 2023
Before 1984, the world of telecom standards looked very different from how it does now.…
Before 1984, the world of telecom standards looked very different from how it does now. Such a world prominently featured closed systems like the one AT&T had in the United States. They were stable and functional systems but led to a sluggish pace of technology innovation due to the lack of competition. The breakup of the Bell System in the early 1980s, where AT&T was forced to divest from their local Bell operating and manufacturing units, caused a tectonic shift in the industry. As a result, new standards bodies rose to meet the demands of a reinvented telecom sector.
Bellcore, formerly Bell Communications Research, was one of the first organizations to answer this demand. Bellcore aided the Regional Bell Operating Companies by creating “generic requirements” (GR) documents that specified the design, operation, and purpose of telecom networks, equipment, and components. These GRs provided thorough criteria to help new suppliers design interoperable equipment, leading to the explosion of a new supplier ecosystem that made “GR conformant” equipment. An industry that relied on a few major suppliers thus became a more dynamic and competitive field, with carriers allowed to work with several suppliers almost overnight.
Bellcore is now Telcordia, and although the industry saw the emergence of other standards bodies, Telcordia still plays a major role in standardization by updating and producing new GR documents. Some of the most well-known documents are reliability prediction standards for commercial telecommunication products. Let’s discuss what these standards entail and why they matter in the industry.
Telecommunications carriers can use general requirements documents to select products that meet reliability and performance needs. The documents cover five sections:
Several of these specifications require environmental/thermal testing and often refer to other MIL STD and EIA / TIA test specifications. Listed below are a few common Telcordia test specifications that require the use of environmental testing.
| Telcordia Generic Requirement | Description/Applicable Product |
|---|---|
| GR-49-CORE | for Outdoor Telephone Network Interface Devices |
| GR-63-CORE | for Network Equipment-Building System Requirements (NEBS): Physical Protection |
| GR-326-CORE | for Single Mode Optical Connectors and Jumper Assemblies (Fiber Optics) |
| GR-468-CORE | for Optoelectronic Devices Used in Telecommunications Equipment |
| GR-487-CORE | for Electronic Equipment Cabinets (Enclosures) |
| GR-974-CORE | for Telecommunications Line Protector Units (TLPUS) |
| GR-1209-CORE | for Fiber Optic Branching Components |
| GR-1221-CORE | for Passive Optical Components |
For example, our optical transceivers at EFFECT Photonics comply with the Telcordia GR-468 qualification, which describes how to test optoelectronic devices for reliability under extreme conditions. Qualification depends upon maintaining optical integrity throughout an appropriate test regimen. Accelerated environmental tests are described in the diagram below. The GR recommends that a chosen test regimen be constructed upon expected conditions and stresses over the long term life of a system and/or device.
| Mechanical Reliability & Temperature Testing | ||
|---|---|---|
| Shock & Vibration | High / Low Storage Temp | Temp Cycle |
| Damp Heat | Cycle Moisture Resistance | Hot Pluggable |
| Mating Durability | Accelerated Aging | Life Expectancy Calculation |
Our manufacturing facilities and partners include capabilities for the temperature cycling and reliability testing needed to match Telcordia standards, such as temperature cycling ovens and chambers with humidity control.
Companies engage in telecom standards for several reasons:
One of our central company objectives is to bring the highest-performing optical technologies, such as coherent detection, all the way to the network edge. However, achieving this goal doesn’t just require us to focus on the optical or electronic side but also on meeting the mechanical and temperature reliability standards required to operate coherent devices outdoors. This is why it’s important for EFFECT Photonics to constantly follow and contribute to standards as it prepares its new product lines.
Tags: accelerated, AT&T, Bellcore, closed, coherent, innovation, monopoly, open, partners, reliability, resource allocation, service life, technology, Telcordia
News
January 18, 2023
Eindhoven, the Netherlands – Earlier this week, Boudewijn Docter, announced that he was stepping down…
Eindhoven, the Netherlands – Earlier this week, Boudewijn Docter, announced that he was stepping down as President and Director of EFFECT Photonics at the end of January.
Boudewijn co-founded EFFECT Photonics with Tim Koene 13 years ago and since then has been building a company that started out of a lab at the TU/e and has grown into an internationally respected player in the field of photonic integrated technology.
Commenting on his decision, Boudewijn said: “I’m immensely proud of what we have achieved so far. Although the adventure is far from over, I feel that the team is ready to guide the company through the next cycle of growth. For me, this is a natural time to hand over my daily activities in the management team to my colleague Roberto Marcoccia and his team.”
Today it was announced that Boudewijn would be joining HighTechXL, a venture building/start-up accelerator focused on deep-tech technology as their Chief Growth Officer. As Chief Growth Officer, Boudewijn will work to inspire, support, and coach newly created HTXL ventures, helping them become investor-ready by the end of their nine-month venture-building program. While this will be Boudewijn’s main focus, he will still be available in an advisory capacity and also continue to represent EFFECT Photonics in the Dutch photonics ecosystem.
On behalf of everyone at EFFECT Photonics, we want to thank Boudewijn for everything that he has done and meant for the company. We wish him every success in this next chapter and in his new role, and we look forward to continuing the EFFECT Photonics journey with him but then in a slightly different way.
Insights
January 18, 2023
In the optical access networks, the 400ZR pluggables that have become mainstream in datacom applications…
In the optical access networks, the 400ZR pluggables that have become mainstream in datacom applications are too expensive and power-hungry. Therefore, operators are strongly interested in 100G pluggables that can house coherent optics in compact form factors, just like 400ZR pluggables do. 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. However, this interest had yet to materialize into a 100ZR market because no affordable or power-efficient products were available. The most the industry could offer was 400ZR pluggables that were “powered-down” for 100G capacity.
By embracing smaller and more customizable light sources, new optimized DSP designs, and high-volume manufacturing capabilities, we can develop native 100ZR solutions with lower costs that better fit edge and access networks.
Since the telecom and datacom industries want to pack more and more transceivers on a single router faceplate, integrable tunable laser assemblies (ITLAs) must maintain performance while moving to smaller footprints and lower power consumption and cost.
Fortunately, such ambitious specifications became possible thanks to improved photonic integration technology. The original 2011 ITLA standard from the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) was 74mm long by 30.5mm wide. By 2015, most tunable lasers shipped in a micro-ITLA form factor that cut the original ITLA footprint in half. In 2021, the nano-ITLA form factor designed for QSFP-DD and OSFP modules had once again cut the micro-ITLA footprint almost in half.
There are still plenty of discussions over the future of ITLA packaging to fit the QSFP28 form factors of these new 100ZR transceivers. For example, every tunable laser needs a wavelength locker component that stabilizes the laser’s output regardless of environmental conditions such as temperature. Integrating that wavelength locker component with the laser chip would help reduce the laser package’s footprint.
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 that 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.
The 5 Watt-power requirement of 100ZR in a QSFP28 form factor is significantly reduced compared to the 15-Watt specification of 400ZR transceivers in a QSFP-DD form factor. Achieving this reduction requires a digital signal processor (DSP) specifically optimized for the 100G transceiver.
Current DSPs are designed to be agnostic to the material platform of the photonic integrated circuit (PIC) they are connected to, which can be Indium Phosphide (InP) or Silicon. Thus, they do not exploit the intrinsic advantages of these material platforms. Co-designing the DSP chip alongside the PIC can lead to a much better fit between these components.
To illustrate the impact of co-designing PIC and DSP, let’s look at an example. A PIC and a standard platform-agnostic DSP typically operate with signals of differing intensities, so they need some RF analog electronic components to “talk” to each other. This signal power conversion overhead constitutes roughly 2-3 Watts or about 10-15% of transceiver power consumption.
However, the modulator of an InP PIC can run at a lower voltage than a silicon modulator. If this InP PIC and the DSP are designed and optimized together instead of using a standard DSP, the PIC 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 the RF analog driver, doing away with most of the power conversion overhead we discussed previously.
To become more accessible and affordable, the photonics manufacturing chain can learn from electronics packaging, assembly, and testing methods that are already well-known and standardized. After all, building a special production line is much more expensive than modifying an existing production flow.
There are several ways in which photonics packaging, assembly, and testing can be made more affordable and accessible: passive alignments of the optical fiber, BGA-style packaging, and flip-chip bonding. Making these techniques more widespread will make a massive difference in photonics’ ability to scale up and become as available as electronics. To read more about them, please read our previous article.
The interest in novel 100ZR coherent pluggable optics for edge and access applications is strong, but the market has struggled to provide “native” and specific 100ZR solutions to address this interest. Transceiver developers need to embrace several new technological approaches to develop these solutions. They will need smaller tunable laser packages that can fit the QSFP28 form factors of 100ZR solutions, optimized and co-designed DSPs that meet the reduced power consumption goals, and sub-assemblies that leverage electronic ecosystems for increased scale and reduced cost.
Tags: 100 ZR, 100G, 100ZR, 400ZR, C-band, C-PON, coherent, DSP, filters, future proof, Korea, laser sources, O-band, Packaging, pluggable, roadmap, S-band
Insights
January 11, 2023
Smaller data centers near the end user can reduce latency, overcome inconsistencies in connectivity, and…
Smaller data centers near the end user can reduce latency, overcome inconsistencies in connectivity, and store and compute data closer to the end user. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, these advantages will drive the worldwide market for edge data centers to more than triple from $4 billion in 2017 to $13.5 billion in 2024. With the increased use of edge computing, more high-speed transceivers are required to link edge data centers. According to Cignal AI, the number of 100G equivalent ports sold for edge applications will double between 2022 and 2025, as indicated in the graph below.
The increase in edge infrastructure comes with many network provisioning and management challenges. While typical data centers were built in centralized and controlled environments, edge deployments will live in remote and uncontrolled environments because they need to be close to where the data is generated. For example, edge infrastructure could be a server plugged into the middle of a busy factory floor to collect data more quickly from their equipment sensors.
This increase in edge infrastructure will provide plenty of headaches to network operators who also need to scale up their networks to handle the increased bandwidths and numbers of connections. More truck rolls must be done to update more equipment, and this option won’t scale cost-effectively, which is why many companies simply prefer not to upgrade and modernize their infrastructure.
A zero-touch provisioning model would represent a major shift in an operator’s ability to upgrade their network equipment. The network administrator could automate the configuration and provisioning of each unit from their central office, ship the units to each remote site, and the personnel in that site (who don’t need any technical experience!) just need to power up the unit. After turning them on, they could be further provisioned, managed, and monitored by experts anywhere in the world.
The optical transceivers potentially connected to some of these edge nodes already have the tools to be part of such a zero-touch provisioning paradigm. Many transceivers have a plug-and-play operation that does not require an expert on the remote site. For example, the central office can already program and determine specific parameters of the optical link, such as temperature, wavelength drift, dispersion, or signal-to-noise ratio, or even what specific wavelength to use. The latter wavelength self-tuning application is shown in Figure 2.
Once plugged in, the transceiver will set the operational parameters as programmed and communicate with the central office for confirmation. These provisioning options make deployment much easier for network operators.
The same channel that establishes parameters remotely during the provisioning phase can also perform monitoring and diagnostics afterward. The headend module in the central office could remotely modify certain aspects of the tail-end module in the remote site, effectively enabling several remote management and diagnostics options. The figure below provides a visualization of such a scenario.
The central office can remotely measure metrics such as the transceiver temperature and power transmitted and received. These metrics can provide a quick and useful health check of the link. The headend module can also remotely read alarms for low/high values of these metrics.
These remote diagnostics and management features can eliminate certain truck rolls and save more operational expenses. They are especially convenient when dealing with very remote and hard-to-reach sites (e.g., an antenna tower) that require expensive truck rolls.
To talk about the impact of remote control on energy sustainability, we first must review the concept of performance margins. This number is a vital measure of received signal quality. It determines how much room there is for the signal to degrade without impacting the error-free operation of the optical link.
In the past, network designers played it safe, maintaining large margins to ensure a robust network operation in different conditions. However, these higher margins usually require higher transmitter power and power consumption. Network management software can use the remote diagnostics provided by this new generation of transceivers to develop tighter, more accurate optical link budgets in real time that require lower residual margins. This could lower the required transceiver powers and save valuable energy.
Another related sustainability feature is deciding whether to operate on low- or high-power mode depending on the optical link budget and fiber length. For example, if the transceiver needs to operate at its maximum capacity, a programmable interface can be controlled remotely to set the amplifiers at their maximum power. However, if the operator uses the transceiver for just half of the maximum capacity, the transceiver can operate with a smaller residual margin and use lower power on the amplifier. The transceiver uses energy more efficiently and sustainably by adapting to these circumstances.
If the industry wants interoperability between different transceiver vendors, these kinds of power parameters for remote management and control should also be standardized.
As edge networks get bigger and more complex, network operators and designers need more knobs and degrees of freedom to optimize network architecture and performance and thus scale networks cost-effectively.
The new generation of transceivers has the tools for remote provisioning, management, and control, which gives optical networks more degrees of freedom for optimization and reduces the need for expensive truck rolls. These benefits make edge networks simpler, more affordable, and more sustainable to build and operate.
Tags: access network, capacity, cost, distributed access networks, DWDM, inventory stock, Loss of signal, maintenance, monitor, optical networks, plug-and-play, remote, remote control, scale, scaling, self-tuning, time
Insights
January 4, 2023
In June 2022, transceiver developer II‐VI Incorporated (now Coherent Corp.) and optical networking solutions provider…
In June 2022, transceiver developer II‐VI Incorporated (now Coherent Corp.) and optical networking solutions provider ADVA announced the launch of the industry’s first 100ZR pluggable coherent transceiver. Discussions in the telecom sector about a future beyond 400G coherent technology have usually focused on 800G products, but there is increasing excitement about “downscaling” to 100G coherent products for certain applications in the network edge and business services. This article will discuss the market and technology forces that drive this change in discourse.
The 400ZR pluggables that have become mainstream in datacom applications are too expensive and power-hungry for the optical network edge. Therefore, operators are strongly interested in 100G pluggables that can house coherent optics in compact form factors, just like 400ZR pluggables do. 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. However, this interest had not really materialized into a 100ZR market because no affordable or power-efficient products were available. The most the industry could offer was 400ZR pluggables that were “powered-down” for 100G capacity.
With the recent II-VI Incorporated and ADVA announcement, the industry is showing its first attempts at a native 100ZR solution that can provide a true alternative to the powered-down 400ZR products. Some of the key specifications of this novel 100ZR solution include:
The 5 Watt-power requirement is a major reduction compared to the 15-Watt specification of 400ZR transceivers in the QSFP-DD form factor. Achieving this spec requires a digital signal processor (DSP) that is specifically optimized for the 100G transceiver.
Transceiver developers often source their DSP, laser, and optical engine from different suppliers, so all these chips are designed separately from each other. This setup reduces the time to market, simplifies the research and design processes, but 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 optical engines but a master of none. DSPs co-designed and optimized for their specific optical engine and laser can significantly improve power efficiency. You can read more about co-design approaches in one of our previous articles.
Making 100ZR coherent optical transceivers more affordable is also a matter of volume production. As discussed in a previous article, if PIC production volumes can increase from a few thousand chips per year to a few million, the price per optical chip can decrease from thousands of Euros to mere tens of Euros. Such manufacturing scale demands a higher upfront investment, but the result is a more accessible product that more customers can purchase.
Achieving this production goal requires photonics manufacturing chains to learn from electronics and leverage existing electronics manufacturing processes and ecosystems. Furthermore, transceiver developers must look for trusted large-scale manufacturing partners to guarantee a secure and high-volume supply of chips and packages.
If you want to know more about how photonics developers can leverage electronic ecosystems and methods, we recommend you read our in-depth piece on the subject.
As the Heavy Reading survey showed, the interest in 100G coherent pluggable optics for edge/access applications is strong, and operators have identified use key use cases within their networks. In the past, there were no true 100ZR solutions that could address this interest, but the use of optimized DSPs and light sources, as well as high-volume manufacturing capabilities, can finally deliver a viable and affordable 100ZR product.
Tags: 100G coherent, 100ZR, DSP, DSPs, edge and access applications, EFFECT Photonics, Photonics
Insights
December 14, 2022
Over the last two decades, power ratings for pluggable modules have increased as we moved…
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. Rockley Photonics researchers estimate that a future electronic switch filled with 800G modules would draw around 1 kW of power just for the optical modules.
Around 50% of a coherent transceiver’s power consumption goes into the digital signal processing (DSP) chip that also performs the functions of clock data recovery (CDR), optical-electrical gear-boxing, and lane switching. Scaling to higher bandwidths leads to even more losses and energy consumption from the DSP chip and its radiofrequency (RF) interconnects with the optical engine.
One way to reduce transceiver power consumption requires designing DSPs that take advantage of the material platform of their optical engine. In this article, we will elaborate on what that means for the Indium Phosphide platform.
Transceiver developers often source their DSP, laser, and optical engine from different suppliers, so all these chips are designed separately from each other. This setup reduces the time to market and simplifies the research and design processes but comes with trade-offs in performance and power consumption.
In such cases, the DSP is like a Swiss army knife: a jack of all trades designed for different kinds of optical engines but a master of none. For example, current DSPs are designed to be agnostic to the material platform of the photonic integrated circuit (PIC) they are connected to, which can be Indium Phosphide (InP) or Silicon. Thus, they do not exploit the intrinsic advantages of these material platforms. Co-designing the DSP chip alongside the PIC can lead to a much better fit between these components.
To illustrate the impact of co-designing PIC and DSP, let’s look at an example. A PIC and a standard platform-agnostic DSP typically operate with signals of differing intensities, so they need some RF analog electronic components to “talk” to each other. This signal power conversion overhead constitutes roughly 2-3 Watts or about 10-15% of transceiver power consumption.
However, the modulator of an InP PIC can run at a lower voltage than a silicon modulator. If this InP PIC and the DSP are designed and optimized together instead of using a standard DSP, the PIC 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 the RF analog driver, doing away with most of the power conversion overhead we discussed previously.
Additionally, the optimized DSP could also be programmed to do some additional signal conditioning that minimizes the nonlinear optical effects of the InP material, which can reduce noise and improve performance.
Russell Fuerst, EFFECT Photonics’ Vice-President of Digital Signal Processing, gave us an interesting insight about designing for the InP platform in a previous interview:
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, the fact that the DSP could control laser and modulator components on the InP can lead to some interesting manipulations of light signals. A DSP that can control these components directly could generate proprietary waveforms or use non-standard constellation and modulation schemes that can boost the performance of a coherent transceiver and increase the capacity of the link.
The biggest problem for DSP designers is still improving performance while reducing power use. This problem can be solved by finding ways to integrate the DSP more deeply with the InP platform, such as letting the DSP control the laser and modulator directly to develop new waveform shaping and modulation schemes. Because the InP platforms have active components, DSP designers can also import more solutions from the RF wireless space.
Tags: analog electronics, building blocks, coherent, dispersion compensation, DSP, energy efficiency, Intra DCI, Photonics, PON, power consumption, reach, simplified
News
December 13, 2022
EINDHOVEN, The Netherlands—EFFECT Photonics, a leading developer of highly integrated optical solutions, announced today that…
EINDHOVEN, The Netherlands—EFFECT Photonics, a leading developer of highly integrated optical solutions, announced today that it has selected Fabrinet (NYSE: FN) as its manufacturing partner for its integrated optical sub-assemblies.
Fabrinet is a global leader in high-precision optical, electronic and mechanical manufacturing services, and a proven partner for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) worldwide. As a manufacturing partner, Fabrinet will perform sourcing, procurement, assembly, test, and calibration of EFFECT Photonics’ integrated optical sub-assemblies.
Increased optical bandwidth is needed more than ever before due to a wide range of cloud and cloud edge applications and the increased access speeds enabled by 5G and beyond. Photonics are ideally suited to serve this need, but production currently plays an important role in bringing integrated optics technology to the masses. By leveraging Fabrinet’s leadership in electro-optical and electronics manufacturing, EFFECT Photonics can adapt and scale its integrated optical solutions to meet ever-changing market demands and high-volume requirements.
“Fabrinet is recognized worldwide for its best-in-class expertise in the field of optical product manufacturing and its ability to support the most demanding markets, technologies, and business models. By leveraging their proven capabilities and longstanding manufacturing prowess, EFFECT Photonics is able to offer our customers increased supply, reliability, efficiency and cost-effectiveness.”
Roberto Marcoccia, CEO, EFFECT Photonics.
“We are pleased to have been selected by EFFECT Photonics as their manufacturing partner to provide production at scale for their optical subassemblies. As a leader in advanced optical packaging and precision manufacturing for complex devices, we are well positioned to support EFFECT Photonics in achieving their business goals.”
Edward Archer, Executive Vice President Sales & Marketing at Fabrinet.
Where Light Meets Digital – EFFECT Photonics is a highly vertically integrated, independent optical systems company addressing the need for high-performance, affordable optic solutions driven by the ever-increasing demand for bandwidth and faster data transfer capabilities.
Using our proprietary digital signal processing and forward error correction technology and ultra-pure light sources, we offer compact form factors with seamless integration, cost efficiency, low power, and security of supply. By leveraging established microelectronics ecosystems, we aim to make our products affordable and available in high volumes to address the challenges in 5G and beyond, access-ready coherent solutions, and cloud and cloud edge services.
For more information, please visit: www.effectphotonics.com. Follow EFFECT Photonics on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Fabrinet is a leading provider of advanced optical packaging and precision optical, electro-mechanical, and electronic manufacturing services to original equipment manufacturers of complex products, such as optical communication components, modules and subsystems, automotive components, medical devices, industrial lasers and sensors. Fabrinet offers a broad range of advanced optical and electro-mechanical capabilities across the entire manufacturing process, including process design and engineering, supply chain management, manufacturing, advanced packaging, integration, final assembly and testing. Fabrinet focuses on production of high complexity products in any mix and any volume. Fabrinet maintains engineering and manufacturing resources and facilities in Thailand, the United States of America, the People’s Republic of China, Israel and the United Kingdom. For more information, please visit www.fabrinet.com.
# # #
Media Contacts:
Colleen Cronin
EFFECT Photonics
colleencronin@effectphotonics.com
Insights
December 7, 2022
Outside of communications applications, photonics can play a major role in sensing and imaging applications.…
Outside of communications applications, photonics can play a major role in sensing and imaging applications. The most well-known of these sensing applications is Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR), which is the light-based cousin of RADAR systems that use radio waves.
To put it in a simple way: LIDAR involves sending out a pulse of light, receiving it back, and using a computer to study how the environment changes that pulse. It’s a simple but quite powerful concept.
If we send pulses of light to a wall and listen to how long it takes for them to come back, we know how far that wall is. That is the basis of time-of-flight (TOF) LIDAR. If we send a pulse of light with multiple wavelengths to an object, we know where the object is and whether it is moving towards you or away from you. That is next-gen LIDAR, known as FMCW LIDAR. These technologies are already used in self-driving cars to figure out the location and distance of other cars. The following video provides a short explainer of how LIDAR works in self-driving cars.
Despite their usefulness, the wider implementation of LIDAR systems is limited by their size, weight, and power (SWAP) requirements. Or, to put it bluntly, they are bulky and expensive. For example, maybe you have seen pictures and videos of self-driving cars with a large LIDAR sensor and scanner on the roof of the car, as in the image below.
Making LIDAR systems more affordable and lighter requires integrating the optical components more tightly and manufacturing them at a higher volume. Unsurprisingly, this sounds like a problem that could be solved by integrated photonics.
Back in 2019, Tesla CEO Elon Musk famously said that “Anyone relying on LIDAR is doomed”. And his scepticism had some substance to it. LIDAR sensors were clunky and expensive, and it wasn’t clear that they would be a better solution than just using regular cameras with huge amounts of visual analysis software. However, the incentive to dominate the future of the automotive sector was too big, and a technology arms race had already begun to miniaturize LIDAR systems into a single photonic chip.
Let’s provide a key example. A typical LIDAR system will require a mechanical system that moves the light source around to scan the environment. This could be as simple as a 360-rotating LIDAR scanner or using small scanning mirrors to steer the beam. However, an even better solution would be to create a LIDAR scanner with no moving parts that could be manufactured at a massive scale on a typical semiconductor process.
This is where optical phased arrays (OPAs) systems come in. An OPA system splits the output of a tunable laser into multiple channels and puts different time delays on each channels. The OPA will then recombine the channels, and depending on the time delays assigned, the resulting light beam will come out at a different angle. In other words, an OPA system can steer a beam of light from a semiconductor chip without any moving parts.
There is still plenty of development required to bring OPAs into maturity. Victor Dolores Calzadilla, a researcher from the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) explains that “The OPA is the biggest bottleneck for achieving a truly solid-state, monolithic lidar. Many lidar building blocks, such as photodetectors and optical amplifiers, were developed years ago for other applications, like telecommunication. Even though they’re generally not yet optimized for lidar, they are available in principle. OPAs were not needed in telecom, so work on them started much later. This component is the least mature.”
Wafer scale photonics manufacturing demands a higher upfront investment, but the resulting high-volume production line drives down the cost per device. This economy-of-scale principle is the same one behind electronics manufacturing, and the same must be applied to photonics. The more optical components we can integrate into a single chip, the more can the price of each component decrease. The more optical System-on-Chip (SoC) devices can go into a single wafer, the more can the price of each SoC decrease.
Researchers at the Technical University of Eindhoven and the JePPIX consortium have done some modelling to show how this economy of scale principle would apply to photonics. If production volumes can increase from a few thousands of chips per year to a few millions, the price per optical chip can decrease from thousands of Euros to mere tens of Euros. This must be the goal for LIDAR and automotive industry.
By integrating all optical components on a single chip, we also shift the complexity from the assembly process to the much more efficient and scalable semiconductor wafer process. Assembling and packaging a device by interconnecting multiple photonic chips increases assembly complexity and costs. On the other hand, combining and aligning optical components on a wafer at a high volume is much easier, which drives down the device’s cost.
Another challenge for photonics technologies is that they need to move from into parameters and specifications in the automotive sector that are often harsher than the telecom/datacom sector. For example, a target temperature range of −40°C to 125°C is often required, which is much broader than the typical industrial temperature range used in the telecom sector. The packaging of the PIC and its coupling to fiber and free space is particularly sensitive to these temperature changes.
| Temperature Standard | Temperature Range (°C) | |
| Min | Max | |
| Commercial (C-temp) | 0 | 70 |
| Extended (E-temp) | -20 | 85 |
| Industrial (I-temp) | -40 | 85 |
| Automotive / Full Military | -40 | 125 |
Fortunately, a substantial body of knowledge already exists to make integrated photonics compatible with harsh environments like those of outer space. After all, photonic integrated circuits (PICs) use similar materials to their electronic counterparts, which have already been qualified for space and automotive applications. Commercial solutions, such as those offered by PHIX Photonics Assembly, Technobis IPS, and the PIXAPP Photonic Packaging Pilot Line, are now available.
Photonics technology must be built on a wafer-scale process that can produce millions of chips in a month. When we can show the market that photonics can be as easy to use as electronics, that will trigger a revolution in the use of photonics worldwide.
The broader availability of photonic devices will take photonics into new applications, such as those of LIDAR and the automotive sector. With a growing integrated photonics industry, LIDAR can become lighter, avoid moving parts, and be manufactured in much larger volumes that reduce the cost of LIDAR devices. Integrated photonics is the avenue for LIDAR to become more accessible to everyone.
Tags: accessible, affordable, automotive, automotive sector, beamforming, discrete, economics of scale, efficient, electronics, laser, LIDAR, phased arrays, photonic integration, power consumption, self-driving car, self-driving cars, space, wafer
Insights
November 30, 2022
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 want to explain how photonic integrated circuits (PICs), the devices that enable all these applications, are made.
The process of designing a PIC should translate an initial application concept into a functioning photonics chip that can be manufactured. In a short course at the OFC 2018 conference, Wim Bogaerts from Ghent University summarized the typical PIC design process in the steps we will describe below.
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 President Boudewijn Docter described a fabrication process with a total of 243 steps!
Yuqing Jiao, Associate Professor at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), explains the fabrication process in a few basic, simplified steps:
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 6 summarizes how an InP photonic device looks after the steps of layer epitaxy, etching, dielectric deposition and planarization, and metallization.
Chip fabrication is a process with many sources of variability, and therefore much testing is required to make sure that the fabricated chip agrees with what was originally designed and simulated. Once that is certified and qualified, the process of packaging and assembling a device with the PIC follows.
While packaging, assembly, and testing are only a small part of the cost of electronic systems, the reverse happens with photonic systems. Researchers at the Technical University of Eindhoven (TU/e) estimate that for most Indium Phosphide (InP) photonics devices, the cost of packaging, assembly, and testing can reach around 80% of the total module cost. There are many research efforts in motion to reduce these costs, which you can learn more about in one of our previous articles.
Especially after the first fabrication run of a new chip, there will be a few rounds of characterization, validation and revisions to make sure the chip performs up to spec. After this first round of characterization and validation, the chip must be made ready for mass production, which requires a series of reliability tests in several environmental different conditions. You can learn more about this process in our previous article on industrial hardening. For example, different applications need different certification of the temperatures in which the chip must operate in.
| Temperature Standard | Temperature Range (°C) | |
| Min | Max | |
| Commercial (C-temp) | 0 | 70 |
| Extended (E-temp) | -20 | 85 |
| Industrial (I-temp) | -40 | 85 |
| Automotive / Full Military | -40 | 125 |
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 amount of knowledge in chip design, fabrication, and testing from experts in different fields all around the world. EFFECT Photonics was founded by people who fabricated these chips themselves, understand the process intimately, and developed the connections and network to develop cutting-edge PICs at scale.
Tags: building blocks, c-temp, coherent, die testing, DSP, electron beam lithography, faults, I-temp, imprint lithography, InP, interfaces, optical lithography, reach, scale, wafer testing
Insights
November 24, 2022
The tunable laser is a core component of every optical communication system, both direct detect…
The tunable laser is a core component of every optical communication system, both direct detect and coherent. The laser generates the optical signal modulated and sent over the optical fiber. Thus, the purity and strength of this signal will have a massive impact on the bandwidth and reach of the communication system.
Depending on the material platform, system architecture, and requirements, optical system developers must balance laser parameters—tunability, purity, size, environmental resistance, and power—for the best system performance.
In this article, we will talk about one specific kind of laser—the integrable tunable laser assembly (ITLA)—and when it is needed.
The promise of silicon photonics (SiP) is compatibility with existing electronic manufacturing ecosystems and infrastructure. Integrating silicon components on a single chip with electronics manufacturing processes can dramatically reduce the footprint and the cost of optical systems and open avenues for closer integration with silicon electronics on the same chip. However, the one thing silicon photonics misses is the laser component.
Silicon is not a material that can naturally emit laser light from electrical signals. Decades of research have created silicon-based lasers with more unconventional nonlinear optical techniques. Still, they cannot match the power, efficiency, tunability, and cost-at-scale of lasers made from indium phosphide (InP) and other III-V compound semiconductors.
Therefore, making a suitable laser for silicon photonics does not mean making an on-chip laser from silicon but an external laser from III-V materials such as InP. This light source will be coupled via optical fiber to the silicon components on the chip while maintaining a low enough footprint and cost for high-volume integration. The external laser typically comes in the form of an integrable tunable laser assembly (ITLA).
Meanwhile, a photonic chip developer that uses the InP platform for its entire chip instead of silicon can use an integrated laser directly on its chip. Using an external or integrated depends on the transceiver developer’s device requirements, supply chain, and manufacturing facilities and processes. You can read more about the differences in this article.
In summary, an integrable tunable laser assembly (ITLA) is a small external laser that can be coupled to an optical system (like a transceiver) via optical fiber. This ITLA must maintain a low enough footprint and cost for high-volume integration with the optical system.
Since the telecom and datacom industries want to pack more and more transceivers on a single router faceplate, ITLAs need to maintain performance while moving to smaller footprints and lower power consumption and cost.
Fortunately, such ambitious specifications became possible thanks to improved photonic integration technology. The original 2011 ITLA standard from the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) was 74mm long by 30.5mm wide. By 2015, most tunable lasers shipped in a micro-ITLA form factor that cut the original ITLA footprint in half. In 2021, the nano-ITLA form factor designed for QSFP-DD and OSFP modules had once again cut the micro-ITLA footprint almost in half. The QSFP-DD modules that house the full transceiver are smaller (78mm by 20mm) than the original ITLA form factor. Stunningly, tunable laser manufacturers achieved this size reduction without impacting laser purity and power.
With the increasing demand for coherent transceivers, many companies have performed acquisitions and mergers that allow them to develop transceiver components internally and thus secure their supply. LightCounting predicts that this consolidation will decrease the sales of modulator and receiver components but that the demand for tunable lasers (mainly in the form of ITLAs) will continue to grow. The forecast expects the tunable laser market for transceivers to reach a size of $400M in 2026. We talk more about these market forces in one of our previous articles.
However, the industry consolidation will make it harder for component and equipment manufacturers to source lasers from independent vendors for their transceivers. The market needs more independent vendors to provide high-performance ITLA components that adapt to different datacom or telecom provider needs. Following these trends, at EFFECT Photonics we are not only developing the capabilities to provide a complete, fully-integrated coherent transceiver solution but also the ITLA units needed by vendors who use external lasers.
The world is moving towards tunability. As telecom and datacom industries seek to expand their network capacity without increasing their fiber infrastructure, the sales of tunable transceivers will explode in the coming years. These transceivers need tunable lasers with smaller sizes and lower power consumption than ever.
Some transceivers will use lasers integrated directly on the same chip as the optical engine. Others will have an external laser coupled via fiber to the optical engine. The need for these external lasers led to the development of the ITLA form factors, which get smaller and smaller with every generation.
Tags: coherent, Density, discrete, DSP, full integration, high-performance, independent, InP, ITLA, micro ITLA, nano ITLA, power consumption, reach, SiP, size, tunable, tunable lasers, versatile
Insights
November 16, 2022
Coherent transmission has become a fundamental component of optical networks to address situations where direct…
Coherent transmission has become a fundamental component of optical networks to address situations where direct detect technology cannot provide the required capacity and reach.
While Direct Detect transmission only uses the amplitude of the light signal, Coherent optical transmission manipulates three different light properties: amplitude, phase, and polarization. These additional degrees of modulation allow for faster optical signals without compromising the transmission distance. Furthermore, coherent technology enables capacity upgrades without replacing the expensive physical fiber infrastructure on the ground.
However, the demand for data never ceases, and with it, developers of digital signal processors (DSPs) have had to figure out ways to improve the efficiency of coherent transmission. In this article, we will briefly describe the impact of two algorithms that DSP developers use to make coherent transmission more efficient: Forward Error Correction (FEC) and Probabilistic Constellation Shaping (PCS).
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.
Let’s provide a high-level overview of how FEC works. An 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.
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.
We must highlight that FEC is a block of an electronic DSP engine with its own specialized circuitry and algorithms, so it is a separate piece of intellectual property. Therefore, developing the entire DSP electronic engine (see Figure 2 for the critical component blocks of a DSP) requires ownership or access to specific FEC intellectual property.
DSP developers can transmit more data by transmitting more states in their quadrature-amplitude modulation process. The simplest kind of QAM (4-QAM) uses four different states (usually called constellation points), combining two different intensity levels and two different phases of light.
By using more intensity levels and phases, more bits can be transmitted in one go. State-of-the-art commercially available 400ZR transceivers typically use 16-QAM, with sixteen different constellation points that arise from combining four different intensity levels and four phases. However, this increased transmission capacity comes at a price: a signal with more modulation orders is more susceptible to noise and distortions. That’s why these transceivers can transmit 400Gbps over 100km but not over 1000km.
One of the most remarkable recent advances in DSPs to increase the reach of light signals is Probabilistic Constellation Shaping (PCS). In the typical 16-QAM modulation used in coherent transceivers, each constellation point has the same probability of being used. This is inefficient since the outer constellation points that require more power have the same probability as the inner constellation points that require lower power.
PCS uses the low-power inner constellation points more frequently and the outer constellation points less frequently, as shown in Figure 3. This feature provides many benefits, including improved tolerance to distortions and easier system optimization to specific bit transmission requirements. If you want to know more about it, please read the explainers here and here.
Algorithms like FEC and PCS have usually been proprietary technologies. Equipment and component manufacturers closely guarded their algorithms because they provided a critical competitive advantage. However, this often meant that coherent transceivers from different vendors could not operate with each other, and a single vendor had to be used for the entire network deployment.
Over time, coherent transceivers have increasingly needed to become interoperable, leading to some standardization in these algorithms. For example, the 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. Perhaps in the future, this could happen with PCS methods.
Future DSPs could switch among different algorithms and methods 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. Similarly, longer reach could be achieved if the DSP activates its PCS feature.
| 400 ZR | 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 |
The entire field of communication technology can arguably be summarized with a single question: how can we transmit more information into a single frequency-limited signal over the longest possible distance?
DSP developers have many tools to answer this question, and two of them are FEC and PCS. Both technologies make coherent links much more tolerant of noise and can extend their reach. Future pluggables that handle different use cases must use different coding, error coding, and modulation schemes to adapt to different network requirements.
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.
Tags: coherent, constellation shaping, DSP, DSPs, error compensation, FEC, PCS, power, Proprietary, reach, reconfigurable, standardized, standards
Insights
November 9, 2022
Smaller data centers placed locally have the potential to minimize latency, overcome inconsistent connections, and…
Smaller data centers placed locally have the potential to minimize latency, overcome inconsistent connections, and store and compute data closer to the end user. 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.
As edge data centers become more common, the issue of interconnecting them becomes more prominent. This situation motivated the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) to create the 400ZR and ZR+ standards for pluggable modules. With small enough modules to pack a router faceplate densely, the datacom sector could profit from a 400ZR solution for high-capacity data center interconnects of up to 80km. Cignal AI forecasts that 400ZR shipments will dominate the edge applications, as shown in the figure below.
The 400ZR standard has made coherent technology and dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) the dominant solution in the metro data center interconnects (DCIs) space. Datacom provider operations teams found the simplicity of coherent pluggables very attractive. There was no need to install and maintain additional amplifiers and compensators as in direct detect technology. A single coherent transceiver plugged into a router could fulfill the requirements.
However, there are still obstacles that prevent coherent from becoming dominant in shorter-reach DCI links at the campus (< 10km distance) and intra-datacenter (< 2km distance) level. These spaces require more optical links and transceivers, and coherent technology is still considered too power-hungry and expensive to become the de-facto solution here.
Fortunately, there are avenues for coherent technology to overcome these barriers. By embracing multi-laser arrays, DSP co-design, and electronic ecosystems, coherent technology can mature and become a viable solution for every data center interconnect scenario.
Earlier this year, Intel Labs demonstrated an eight-wavelength laser array fully integrated on a silicon wafer. These milestones are essential for optical transceivers because the laser arrays can allow for multi-channel transceivers that are more cost-effective when scaling up to higher speeds.
Let’s say we need an intra-DCI link with 1.6 Terabits/s of capacity. There are three ways we could implement it:
Multi-laser array and multi-channel solutions will become increasingly necessary to increase link capacity in coherent systems. They will not need more slots in the router faceplate while simultaneously avoiding the higher cost and complexity of increasing the speed with just a single channel.
Transceiver developers often source their DSP, laser, and optical engine from different suppliers, so all these chips are designed separately from each other. This setup reduces the time to market and simplifies the research and design processes but comes with trade-offs in performance and power consumption.
In such cases, the DSP is like a Swiss army knife: a jack of all trades designed for different kinds of optical engines but a master of none. For example, current DSPs are designed to be agnostic to the material platform of the photonic integrated circuit (PIC) they are connected to, which can be Indium Phosphide (InP) or Silicon. Thus, they do not exploit the intrinsic advantages of these material platforms. Co-designing the DSP chip alongside the PIC can lead to a much better fit between these components.
To illustrate the impact of co-designing PIC and DSP, let’s look at an example. A PIC and a standard platform-agnostic DSP typically operate with signals of differing intensities, so they need some RF analog electronic components to “talk” to each other. This signal power conversion overhead constitutes roughly 2-3 Watts or about 10-15% of transceiver power consumption.
However, the modulator of an InP PIC can run at a lower voltage than a silicon modulator. If this InP PIC and the DSP are designed and optimized together instead of using a standard DSP, the PIC 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 the RF analog driver, doing away with most of the power conversion overhead we discussed previously.
Additionally, the optimized DSP could also be programmed to do some additional signal conditioning that minimizes the nonlinear optical effects of the InP material, which can reduce noise and improve performance.
Making coherent optical transceivers more affordable is a matter of volume production. As discussed in a previous article, if PIC production volumes can increase from a few thousand chips per year to a few million, the price per optical chip can decrease from thousands of Euros to mere tens of Euros. Achieving this production goal requires photonics manufacturing chains to learn from electronics and leverage existing electronics manufacturing processes and ecosystems.
While vertically-integrated PIC development has its strengths, a fabless model in which developers outsource their PIC manufacturing to a large-scale foundry is the simplest way to scale to production volumes of millions of units. Fabless PIC developers can remain flexible and lean, relying on trusted large-scale manufacturing partners to guarantee a secure and high-volume supply of chips. Furthermore, the fabless model allows photonics developers to concentrate their R&D resources on their end market and designs instead of costly fabrication facilities.
Further progress must also be made in the packaging, assembly, and testing of photonic chips. While these processes are only a small part of the cost of electronic systems, the reverse happens with photonics. To become more accessible and affordable, the photonics manufacturing chain must become more automated and standardized. It must move towards proven and scalable packaging methods that are common in the electronics industry.
If you want to know more about how photonics developers can leverage electronic ecosystems and methods, we recommend you read our in-depth piece on the subject.
Coherent transceivers are already established as the solution for metro Data Center Interconnects (DCIs), but they need to become more affordable and less power-hungry to fit the intra- and campus DCI application cases. Fortunately, there are several avenues for coherent technology to overcome these cost and power consumption barriers.
Multi-laser arrays can avoid the higher cost and complexity of increasing capacity with just a single transceiver channel. Co-designing the optics and electronics can allow the electronic DSP to exploit the intrinsic advantages of specific photonics platforms such as indium phosphide. Finally, leveraging electronic ecosystems and processes is vital to increase the production volumes of coherent transceivers and make them more affordable.
By embracing these pathways to progress, coherent technology can mature and become a viable solution for every data center interconnect scenario.
Tags: campus, cloud, cloud edge, codesign, coherent, DCI, DSP, DSPs, DWDM, integration, intra, light sources, metro, modulator, multi laser arrays, photonic integration, PIC, power consumption, wafer testing
16 November 2022
12:30 pm - 1:00 pm
Joost Verberk, Director
FSO has often been talked about as some futuristic technology to be used in space applications, but it can be used more than that, including ground-to-ground links in access networks. FSO can deliver a wireless access solution that can be deployed quickly and with more bandwidth capacity, security features, and less power consumption than traditional point-to-point microwave links. Furthermore, since it does not use the RF spectrum, there is no need to secure spectrum licenses.
FSO struggled to break through Into practical applications despite these benefits because of certain technical challenges. Communications infrastructure, therefore, focused on more stable transmission alternatives such as optical fiber and RF signals. However, research and innovation over the last few decades are removing these technical barriers.
One obstacle to achieving longer distances with FSO had to do with the quality of the laser signal. Over time, FSO developers have found a solution to this issue in adaptive optics systems. These systems compensate for distortions in the beam by using an active optical element—such as a deformable mirror or liquid crystal—that dynamically changes its structure depending on the shape of the laser beam. Dutch startup Aircision uses this kind of technology in its FSO systems to increase their tolerance to atmospheric disruptions.
Another drawback of FSO is aligning the transmitter and receiver units. Laser beams are extremely narrow, and if the beam doesn’t hit the receiver lens at just the right angle, the information may be lost. The system requires almost perfect alignment, and it must maintain this alignment even when there are small changes in the beam trajectory due to wind or atmospheric disturbances. FSO systems can handle these alignment issues with fast steering mirror (FSM) technology. These mirrors are driven with electrical signals and are fast, compact, and accurate enough to compensate the disturbances in the beam trajectory.
However, even if the system can maintain the beam trajectory and shape, atmospheric turbulence can still degrade the message and cause interference in the data. Fortunately, FSO developers also use sophisticated digital signal processing techniques (DSP) to compensate for these impairments. These DSP techniques allow for reliable, high-capacity, quick deployments even through thick clouds and fog.
FSO links can now handle Gbps capacity over several kilometers thanks to all these technological advances. For example, a collaboration between Aircision and TNO demonstrated in 2021 that their FSO systems could reliably transmit 10 Gbps over 2.5 km.
Register on the website or here today.
Tags: Free Space Optics for Access Networks, FSO, wireless congress, wirelesscongress
Insights
November 2, 2022
Thanks to wafer-scale technology, electronics have driven down the cost per transistor for many decades.…
Thanks to wafer-scale technology, electronics have driven down the cost per transistor for many decades. This allowed the world to enjoy chips that every generation became smaller and provided exponentially more computing power for the same amount of money. This scale-up process is how everyone now has a computer processor in their pocket that is millions of times more powerful than the most advanced computers of the 1960s that landed men on the moon.
This progress in electronics integration is a key factor that brought down the size and cost of coherent transceivers, packing more bits than ever into smaller areas. However, photonics has struggled to keep up with electronics, with the photonic components dominating the cost of transceivers. If the transceiver cost curve does not continue to decrease, it will be challenging to achieve the goal of making them more accessible across the entire optical network.
To trigger a revolution in the use of photonics worldwide, it needs to be as easy to use as electronics. In the words of our Chief Technology Officer, Tim Koene: “We need to buy photonics from a catalog as we do with electronics, have datasheets that work consistently, be able to solder it to a board and integrate it easily with the rest of the product design flow.”
This goal requires photonics manufacturing to leverage existing electronics manufacturing processes and ecosystems. Photonics must embrace fabless models, chips that can survive soldering steps, and electronic packaging and assembly methods.
Increasing the volume of photonics manufacturing is a big challenge. Some photonic chip developers manufacture their chips in-house within their fabrication facilities. This approach has some substantial advantages, giving component manufacturers complete control over their production process.
However, this approach has its trade-offs when scaling up. If a vertically-integrated chip developer wants to scale up in volume, they must make a hefty capital expenditure (CAPEX) in more equipment and personnel. They must develop new fabrication processes as well as develop and train personnel. Fabs are not only expensive to build but to operate. Unless they can be kept at nearly full utilization, operating expenses (OPEX) also drain the facility owners’ finances.
Especially in the case of an optical transceiver market that is not as big as that of consumer electronics, it’s hard not to wonder whether that initial investment is cost-effective. For example, LightCounting estimates that 55 million optical transceivers were sold in 2021, while the International Data Corporation estimates that 1.4 billion smartphones were sold in 2021. The latter figure is 25 times larger than that of the transceiver market.
Electronics manufacturing experienced a similar problem during their 70s and 80s boom, with smaller chip start-ups facing almost insurmountable barriers to market entry because of the massive CAPEX required. Furthermore, the large-scale electronics manufacturing foundries had excess production capacity that drained their OPEX. The large-scale foundries ended up selling that excess capacity to the smaller chip developers, who became fabless. In this scenario, everyone ended up winning. The foundries serviced multiple companies and could run their facilities at total capacity, while the fabless companies could outsource manufacturing and reduce their expenditures.
This fabless model, with companies designing and selling the chips but outsourcing the manufacturing, should also be the way to go for photonics. Instead of going through a more costly, time-consuming process, the troubles of scaling up for photonics developers are outsourced and (from the perspective of the fabless company) become as simple as putting a purchase order in place. Furthermore, the fabless model allows photonics developers to concentrate their R&D resources on the end market. This is the simplest way forward if photonics moves into million-scale volumes.
While packaging, assembly, and testing are only a small part of the cost of electronic systems, the reverse happens with photonic integrated circuits (PICs). Researchers at the Technical University of Eindhoven (TU/e) estimate that for most Indium Phosphide (InP) photonics devices, the cost of packaging, assembly, and testing can reach around 80% of the total module cost.
To become more accessible and affordable, the photonics manufacturing chain must become more automated and standardized. The lack of automation makes manufacturing slower and prevents data collection that can be used for process control, optimization, and standardization.
One of the best ways to reach these automation and standardization goals is to learn from electronics packaging, assembly, and testing methods that are already well-known and standardized. After all, building a special production line is much more expensive than modifying an existing production flow.
There are several ways in which photonics packaging, assembly, and testing can be made more affordable and accessible. Below are a few examples:
These might be novel technologies for photonics developers who have started implementing them in the last five or ten years. However, the electronics industry embraced these technologies 20 or 30 years ago. Making these techniques more widespread will make a massive difference in photonics’ ability to scale up and become as available as electronics.
Soldering remains another tricky step for photonics assembly and packaging. Photonics device developers usually custom order a PIC, then wire and die bond to the electronics. However, some elements in the PIC cannot handle soldering temperatures, making it difficult to solder into an electronics board. Developers often must glue the chip onto the board with a non-standard process that needs additional verification for reliability.
This goes back to the issue of process standardization. Current PICs often use different materials and processes from electronics, such as optical fiber connections and metals for chip interconnects, that cannot survive a standard soldering process.
Adopting BGA-style packaging and flip-chip bonding techniques will make it easier for PICs to survive this soldering process. There is ongoing research and development worldwide, including at EFFECT Photonics, to make fiber coupling and other PIC aspects compatible with these electronic packaging methods.
PICs that can handle being soldered to circuit boards will allow the industry to build optical subassemblies that can be made more readily available in the open market and can go into trains, cars, or airplanes.
Photonics must leverage existing electronics ecosystems and processes to scale up and have a greater global impact. Our Chief Technology Officer, Tim Koene, explains what this means:
Photonics technology needs to integrate more electronic functionalities into the same package. It needs to build photonic integration and packaging support that plays by the rules of existing electronic manufacturing ecosystems. It needs to be built on a semiconductor manufacturing process that can produce millions of chips in a month.
As soon as photonics can achieve these larger production volumes, it can reach price points and improvements in quality and yield closer to those of electronics. When we show the market that photonics can be as easy to use as electronics, that will trigger a revolution in its worldwide use.
This vision is one of our guiding lights at EFFECT Photonics, where we aim to develop optical systems that can have an impact all over the world in many different applications.
Tags: automotive sector, BGA style packaging, compatible, computing power, cost per mm, efficient, electronic, electronic board, electronics, fabless, Photonics, risk, scale, soldering, transistor, wafer scale
Insights
October 26, 2022
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, the number of 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.
400 Gbps links are becoming the standard for links all across telecom transport networks and data center interconnects, but providers are already thinking about the next steps. LightCounting forecasts significant growth in shipments of dense-wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) ports with data rates of 600G, 800G, and beyond in the next five years.
The major obstacles in this roadmap 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. Rockley Photonics researchers estimate that a future electronic switch filled with 800G modules would draw around 1 kW of power just for the optical modules.
Thus, many incentives exist to continue improving the performance and power consumption of pluggable optical transceivers. By embracing increased photonic integration, co-designed PICs and DSPs, and multi-laser arrays, pluggables will be better able to scale in data rates while remaining affordable and at low power.
While coherent technology has become the dominant one in metro distances (80 km upwards), the campus (< 10 km) and intra-data center (< 2 km) distances remain in contention between direct detect technologies such as PAM 4 and coherent.
These links were originally the domain of direct detect products when the data rates were 100Gbps. However, at 400Gbps speeds, the power consumption of coherent technology is much closer to that of direct detect PAM-4 solutions. This gap in power consumption is expected to disappear at 800Gbps, as shown in the figure below.
A major for this decreased gap is that direct detect technology will often require additional amplifiers and compensators at these data rates, while coherent pluggables do not. This also makes coherent technology simpler to deploy and maintain. Furthermore, as the volume production of coherent transceivers increases, their price will also become competitive with direct detect solutions.
Lately, we have seen many efforts to increase further the integration on a component level across the electronics industry. For example, moving towards greater integration of components in a single chip has yielded significant efficiency benefits in electronics processors. Apple’s M1 processor integrates all electronic functions in a single system-on-chip (SoC) and consumes a third of the power compared to the processors with discrete components used in their previous generations of computers. We can observe this progress in the table below.
| Mac Mini Model | Power Consumption (Watts) | |
| Idle | Max | |
| 2020, M1 | 7 | 39 |
| 2018, Core i7 | 20 | 122 |
| 2014, Core i5 | 6 | 85 |
| 2010, Core 2 Duo | 10 | 85 |
| 2006, Core Solo or Duo | 23 | 110 |
| 2005, PowerPC G4 | 32 | 85 |
Photonics can achieve greater efficiency gains by following a similar approach to integration. The interconnects required to couple discrete optical components result in electrical and optical losses that must be compensated with higher transmitter power and more energy consumption. In contrast, the more active and passive optical components (lasers, modulators, detectors, etc.) manufacturers can integrate on a single chip, the more energy they can save since they avoid coupling losses between discrete components.
Further improvements in power consumption can be achieved by co-designing electronic digital signal processors (DSPs) with the photonic integrated circuit (PIC) that constitutes the transceiver’s optical engine. Standard DSPs are like a Swiss army knife: a jack of all trades designed for different kinds of optical engines but a master of none.
A DSP that is co-designed and optimized alongside the PIC can better exploit specific advantages of the PIC. For example, if an indium phosphide PIC and a DSP are co-designed together instead of using a standard DSP, the PIC 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 the RF analog driver, drastically reducing a power conversion overhead that is often 10-15% of transceiver power consumption. To learn more about the advantages of co-design, you can read our article on the topic.
Earlier this year, Intel Labs demonstrated an eight-wavelength laser array fully integrated on a silicon wafer. These milestones will provide more cost-effective ways for pluggables to scale to higher data rates.
Let’s say we need a data center interconnect with 1.6 Terabits/s of capacity. There are three ways we could implement it:
Multi-laser array and multi-channel solutions will become increasingly necessary to increase link capacity in coherent systems. They will not need more slots in the router faceplate while simultaneously avoiding the higher cost and complexity of increasing the speed with just a single channel.
The pace of worldwide data demand is relentless, with it the pace of link upgrades required by datacom and telecom networks. 400G transceivers are currently replacing previous 100G solutions, and in a few years, they will be replaced by transceivers with data rates of 800G or 1.6 Terabytes.
The cost and power consumption of coherent technology remain barriers to more widespread capacity upgrades, but the industry is finding ways to overcome them. Tighter photonic integration can minimize the losses of optical systems and their power consumption. Further improvements in power efficiency can be achieved by co-designing DSPs alongside the optical engine. Finally, the onset of multi-laser arrays can avoid the higher cost and complexity of increasing capacity with just a single transceiver channel.
Tags: bandwidth, co-designing, coherent, DSP, full integration, integration, interface, line cards, optical engine, power consumption, RF Interconnections, Viasat
25 October 2022
10:00 am - 1:00 pm
Harald Graber, CCO
Coherent pluggable optics are converging at 400Gbps transmission, the data rate that is set to play a dominant role in optical networks over the next decade. For communications service providers (CSPs), higher performance 400G ZR+ pluggable coherent optics hold particular promise for lowering capex and opex, fostering interoperability, and defining new metro/regional network architectures, including IP over DWDM (IPoDWDM).
In this special webinar, Heavy Reading will be joined by leading experts from Ciena, Effect Photonics, Infinera, and Ribbon to unveil key findings from Heavy Reading’s 2022 global coherent optics operator survey analyzing coherent 400G optics and the evolution to both higher data rates (800G+) and lower rates (coherent 100G pluggables).
Topics addressed will include:
News
October 21, 2022
On October 21st, 1983, the General Conference of Weights and Measures adopted the current value…
On October 21st, 1983, the General Conference of Weights and Measures adopted the current value of the speed of light at 299,792.458 km/s. To commemorate this milestone, hundreds of optics and photonics companies, organizations, and institutes all over the world organize activities every year on this date to celebrate the Day of Photonics and how this technology is impacting our daily lives.
At EFFECT Photonics, we want to celebrate the Day of Photonics by answering some commonly asked questions about photonics and its impact on the world.
Photonics is the study and application of photon (light) generation, manipulation, and detection, often aiming to create, control, and sense light signals.
The term photonics emerged in the 60s and 70s with the development of the first semiconductor lasers and optical fibers. Its goals and even the name “photonics” are born from its analogy with electronics: photonics aims to generate, control, and sense photons (the particles of light) in similar ways to how electronics does with electrons (the particles of electricity).
Photonics can be applied in many ways. For the Day of Photonics, we will explore two categories:
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.
A classic example is optical fiber communications. The webpage you are reading was originally a stream of 0 and 1s that traveled through an optical fiber to reach you.
Outside of optical fibers, photonics can also deliver solutions beyond what traditional radio communications can offer. For example, optical transmission over the air could handle links between different sites of a mobile network, links between cars, or to a satellite out in space. At some point, we may even see the use of Li-Fi, a technology that replaces indoor Wi-Fi links with infrared light.
There are multiple sensing application markets, but their core technology is the same. They need a small device that sends out a known pulse of light, accurately detects how the light comes back, and calculates the properties of the environment from that information. It’s a simple but quite powerful concept.
This concept is already being used to implement LIDAR systems that help self-driving cars determine the location and distance of people and objects. However, there is also potential to use this concept in medical and agri-food applications, such as looking for undesired growths in the human eye or knowing how ripe an apple is.
No, each technology has its strengths.
When transmitting information from point A to B, photonics can do it faster and more efficiently than electronics. For example, optical fiber can transmit information at the speed of light and dissipate less heat than electric wires.
On the other hand, since electricity can be manipulated at the nanometer level more easily than light, electronics are usually better for building computers. There are some specific areas where photonic computers could outperform traditional electronic ones, especially given the rise of quantum computers that can be made with photonic components. However, most computer products will remain electronic for the foreseeable future.
Thus, photonics is not expected to replace electronics but to collaborate and integrate strongly with it. Most future applications will involve photonic systems transmitting or sensing information then processed by electronic computers.
Tags: DayofPhotonics2022, Integrated Photonics, Photonics
Insights
October 20, 2022
In a previous article, we described how free-space optics (FSO) could impact mobile fronthaul and…
In a previous article, we described how free-space optics (FSO) could impact mobile fronthaul and enterprise links. They can deliver a wireless access solution that can be deployed quickly, with more bandwidth capacity, security features, and less power consumption than traditional point-to-point microwave links.
However, there’s potential to do even more. There are network applications on the ground that require very high bandwidths in the range of 100 Gbps and space applications that need powerful transceivers to deliver messages across vast distances. Microwaves are struggling to deliver all the requirements for these use cases.
By merging the coherent technology in fiber optical communications with FSO systems, they can achieve greater reach and capacity than before, enabling these new applications in space and terrestrial links.
Thanks to advances in adaptive optics, fast steering mirrors, and digital signal processors, FSO links can now handle Gbps-capacity links over several kilometers. For example, a collaboration between Dutch FSO startup Aircision and research organization TNO demonstrated in 2021 that their FSO systems could reliably transmit 10 Gbps over 2.5 km.
However, new communication technologies emerge daily, and our digital society keeps evolving and demanding more data. This need for progress has motivated more research and development into increasing the capacity of FSO links to 100 Gbps, providing a new short-reach solution for access networks.
One such initiative came from the collaboration of Norweigan optical network solutions provider Smartoptics, Swedish research institute RISE Acreo, and optical wireless link provider Norwegian Polewall. In a trial set-up at Acreo’s research facilities, Smartoptics’ 100G transponder was used with CFP transceivers to create a 100 Gbps DWDM signal transmitted through the air using Polewall’s optical wireless technology. Their system is estimated to reach 250 meters in the worst possible weather conditions.
Fredrik Larsson, the Optical Transmission Specialist at Smartoptics, explains the importance of this trial:
“Smartoptics is generally recognized as offering a very flexible platform for optical networking, with applications for all types of scenarios. 100Gbps connectivity through the air has not been demonstrated before this trial, at least not with commercially available products. We are proud to be part of that milestone together with Acreo and Polewall,”
Meanwhile, Aircision aims to develop a 100 Gbps coherent FSO system capable of transmitting up to 10km. To achieve this, they have partnered up with EFFECT Photonics, who will take charge of developing coherent modules that can go into Aircision’s future 100G system.
In many ways, the basic technologies to build these coherent FSO systems have been available for some time. However, they included high-power 100G lasers and transceivers originally intended for premium long-reach applications. The high price, footprint, and power consumption of these devices prevented the development of more affordable and lighter FSO systems for the larger access network market.
However, the advances in integration and miniaturization of coherent technology have opened up new possibilities for FSO links. For example, 100ZR transceiver standards enable a new generation of low-cost, low-power coherent pluggables that can be easily integrated into FSO systems. Meanwhile, companies like Aircision are working hard in using technologies such as adaptive optics and fast-steering mirrors to extend the reach of these 100G FSO systems into the kilometer range.
Currently, most space missions use radio frequency communications to send data to and from spacecraft. While radio waves have a proven track record of success in space missions, generating and collecting more mission data requires enhanced communications capabilities.
Coherent optical communications can increase link capacities to spacecraft and satellites by 10 to 100 times that of radio frequency systems. Additionally, optical transceivers can lower the size, weight, and power (SWAP) specifications of satellite communication systems. Less weight and size means a less expensive launch or perhaps room for more scientific instruments. Less power consumption means less drain on the spacecraft’s energy sources.
For example, the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) from NASA, launched in December 2021, aims to showcase the unique capabilities of optical communications. Future missions in space will send data to the LCRD, which then relays the data down to ground stations on Earth. The LCRD will forward this data at rates of 1.2 Gigabits per second over optical links, allowing more high-resolution experiment data to be transmitted back to Earth. LCRD is a technology demonstration expected to pave the way for more widespread use of optical communications in space.
Integrated photonics can boost space communications by lowering the payload. Still, it must overcome the obstacles of a harsh space environment, with radiation hardness, an extreme operational temperature range, and vacuum conditions.
For example, the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) from NASA, launched in December 2021, aims to showcase the unique capabilities of optical communications. Future missions in space will send data to the LCRD, which then relays the data down to ground stations on Earth. The LCRD will forward this data at rates of 1.2 Gigabits per second over optical links, allowing more high-resolution experiment data to be transmitted back to Earth. LCRD is a technology demonstration expected to pave the way for more widespread use of optical communications in space.
| Mission Type | Conditions |
| Pressurized Module | +18.3 ºC to 26.7 °C |
| Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) | -65 ºC to +125°C |
| Geosynchronous Equatorial Orbit (GEO) | -196 ºC to +128 °C |
| Trans-Atmospheric Vehicle | -200 ºC to +260 ºC |
| Lunar Surface | -171 ºC to +111 ºC |
| Martian Surface | -143 ºC to +27 ºC |
The values in Table 1 are unmanaged environmental temperatures and would decrease significantly for electronics and optics systems in a temperature-managed area, perhaps by as much as half.
A substantial body of knowledge exists to make integrated photonics compatible with space environments. After all, photonic integrated circuits (PICs) use similar materials to their electronic counterparts, which have already been space qualified in many implementations.
Much research has gone into overcoming the challenges of packaging PICs with electronics and optical fibers for these space environments, which must include hermetic seals and avoid epoxies. Commercial solutions, such as those offered by PHIX Photonics Assembly, Technobis IPS, and the PIXAPP Photonic Packaging Pilot Line, are now available.
Whenever you want to send data from point A to B, photonics is usually the most efficient way of doing it, be it over a fiber or free space.
This is why EFFECT Photonics sees future opportunities in the free-space optical (FSO) communications sectors. In mobile access networks or satellite link applications, FSO can provide solutions with more bandwidth capacity, security features, and less power consumption than traditional point-to-point microwave links.
These FSO systems can be further boosted by using coherent optical transmission similar to the one used in fiber optics. Offering these systems in a small package that can resist the required environmental conditions will significantly benefit the access network and space sectors.
Tags: 100G, access capacity, access network, capacity, certification, coherent, free space optics, FSO, GEO, ground, LEO, lunar, Photonics, reach, satellite, space, SWAP, temperature, Transceivers
02 December 2022
12:00 pm - 12:30 pm
Awards Ceremony 2022
EFFECT Photonics has been named as a finalist in the “Company of the Year (Private)” category of the 2022 Leading Lights, the global communications industry awards program run by Light Reading.
Now in its 18th year, the Leading Lights Awards recognize the industry’s top companies and their executives for their outstanding achievements in next-generation communications technology, applications, services, strategies and innovation.
The “Company of the Year (Private)” prize is awarded to the privately held firm that stands out from its competitors, innovates constantly, makes investors proud and makes employees happy.
Hundreds of high-quality entries were submitted for this year’s awards across 24 categories. The finalists will be announced in an online ceremony on Friday, 2 December, at 12pm ET/5pm BST.
You can register for the ceremony here. For a full list of finalists read Light Reading’s blog here.
News
October 18, 2022
National approach must make the Netherlands an international leader in sustainable digitalization New coalition wants…
Amsterdam, 18 October 2022 – The ‘National Coalition for Sustainable Digitalization‘ (NCDD) today offers Minister Adriaansens of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy (EZK) a manifesto that encourages the creation of an integrated approach for sustainable digitalization. By developing and applying digital technologies and data, with an eye for integrating digital infrastructure and combating climate change, other negative environmental effects and impact on raw materials, the proposal outlines how the Netherlands can become a leader in international education. Supported by a coalition of more than 70 organizations, together with the government, the business community, knowledge institutions and residents, the integrated approach capitalizes on existing opportunities, solves bottlenecks and develops a roadmap for a sustainable and eco-friendly digital infrastructure footprint.
The new coalition stems from the Amsterdam Economic Board initiative ‘LEAP’. Together with ECP | Platform for the Information Society and the Sustainable Digital Infrastructure Alliance (SDIA), the coalition seeks to work closely together with government agencies in public-private partnerships and establish the Netherlands as a key contributor to identifying a sustainable future for digital systems worldwide.
The coalition has formed the basis for a “Roadmap for Sustainable Digitalization which identifies current bottlenecks and solutions for how best to address these challenges. Recommendations include:
“The clock is ticking. Digitalization is an essential part of sustainability and digitalization must also be sustainable. Our coalition knows better than anyone what opportunities there are, but also which bottlenecks we have to solve. We cannot do that without this government. It’s time for collective decisiveness,” says Eske van Egerschot-Montoya Martinez, Quartermaster of the National Coalition for Sustainable Digitalization.
Digitalization plays an important role in developing economic resilience and resilience, both now and in the future. In addition, it is key in accelerating economic and ecological sustainability. While the Netherlands currently occupies the fourth position in the EU leading group, making digitalization more sustainable must secure and further expand this position for the future.
“The digital sector has been very active and successful in recent years on the theme of sustainability. We have shown major efficiency improvements in the field of energy and raw materials. In order to continue to do that in the future, we need to step up our game and work together with all stakeholders. The new coalition will help us with that,” says Lotte de Bruijn, Director of NLdigital.
The NCDD (National Coalition for Sustainable Digitalisation) stems from the
Amsterdam Economic Board initiative ‘LEAP’. Together with ECP | Platform for the Information Society and the Sustainable Digital Infrastructure Alliance (SDIA), in a public-private coalition of more than 70 organizations from government, business, knowledge institutions and residents, they work on the foundations of the Netherlands as an international sustainable digital leader.
18 October 2022
Amsterdam, 18 oktober 2022 – De ‘Nationale Coalitie Duurzame Digitalisering’ (NCDD) biedt minister Adriaansens (EZK) vandaag een manifest aan dat aanzet tot het maken van een integrale aanpak voor duurzame digitalisering. Door het ontwikkelen en toepassen van digitale technologieën en data, met oog voor het inpassen van digitale infrastructuur en het bestrijden van klimaatverandering, andere negatieve milieueffecten en impact op grondstoffen, moet Nederland internationaal duurzaam digitaal koploper worden. De coalitie van ruim 70 organisaties wil hiervoor samen met overheid, bedrijfsleven, kennisinstellingen en inwoners, bestaande kansen verzilveren, knelpunten oplossen en een routekaart ontwikkelen. Zo moet de transitie naar een duurzame digitale infrastructuur worden versneld en de ecologische footprint van ons digitale systeem worden geminimaliseerd.
De nieuwe coalitie komt voort uit het Amsterdam Economic Board initiatief ‘LEAP’. Samen met ECP | Platform voor de Informatiesamenleving en de Sustainable Digital Infrastructure Alliance (SDIA) wordt in publiek-private samenwerking verder gewerkt aan de fundamenten van Nederland als internationaal duurzaam digitaal koploper.
De coalitie identificeert zes knelpunten en beveelt oplossingen aan. Deze moeten de basis vormen voor een ‘Routekaart Duurzame Digitalisering’. Zo is er momenteel sprake van incoherent en versnipperd overheidsbeleid, een gebrek aan cijfers om integraal op te sturen, gebrekkige wetgeving, versnipperde kennisontwikkeling en innovatie, en ontbreekt het aan een eerlijk Europees speelveld.
Om deze knelpunten op te lossen draagt de coalitie aanbevelingen aan:
“De klok tikt door. Digitalisering is een essentieel onderdeel van verduurzaming en de digitalisering moet ook duurzaam zijn. Onze coalitie weet als geen ander welke kansen er zijn, maar ook welke knelpunten we moeten oplossen. Dat kunnen we niet zonder deze regering. Het is tijd voor collectieve daadkracht.”, aldus Eske van Egerschot-Montoya Martinez, Kwartiermaker van de Nationale Coalitie Duurzame Digitalisering.
Digitalisering speelt een belangrijke rol in het ontwikkelen van economische veerkracht en weerbaarheid. Nu en in de toekomst. Daarnaast vormt het een sleutel in het versnellen van economische en ecologische verduurzaming. Waar Nederland momenteel een vierde positie in de EU-kopgroep bekleedt, moet het verder verduurzamen van digitalisering deze positie voor de toekomst veiligstellen en verder uitbouwen. “De digitale sector is de afgelopen jaren heel actief en succesvol geweest op het thema duurzaamheid. We hebben grote efficiencyverbeteringen laten zien op het gebied van energie en grondstoffen. Om dat in de toekomst te blijven doen, moeten we een tandje bijschakelen en samenwerken met de hele keten. De nieuwe coalitie gaat ons daarbij helpen”, aldus Lotte de Bruijn, directeur NLdigital.
De NCDD (Nationale Coalitie Duurzame Digitalisering) komt voort uit het
Amsterdam Economic Board initiatief ‘LEAP’. Samen met ECP | Platform voor de Informatiesamenleving en de Sustainable Digital Infrastructure Alliance (SDIA) werken zij, in een publiek-private coalitie van ruim 70 organisaties vanuit overheid, bedrijfsleven, kennisinstellingen en inwoners, aan de fundamenten van Nederland als internationaal duurzaam digitaal koploper.
Tags: data processing, European, EZK, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy, National Coalition for Sustainable Digitalization, National Coalition for Sustainable Digitization, NCDD
Insights
October 12, 2022
The world is moving towards tunability. The combination of tunable lasers and dense wavelength division…
The world is moving towards tunability. The combination of tunable lasers and dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) allows the datacom and telecom industries to expand their network capacity without increasing their existing fiber infrastructure. Furthermore, the miniaturization of coherent technology into pluggable transceiver modules has enabled the widespread implementation of IP over DWDM solutions. Self-tuning algorithms have also made DWDM solutions more widespread by simplifying installation and maintenance. Hence, many application cases—metro transport, data center interconnects, and —are moving towards tunable pluggables.
The tunable laser is a core component of all these tunable communication systems, both direct detection and coherent. The laser generates the optical signal modulated and sent over the optical fiber. Thus, the purity and strength of this signal will have a massive impact on the bandwidth and reach of the communication system. This article will clarify some critical aspects of laser design for communication systems.
The promise of silicon photonics (SiP) is compatibility with existing electronic manufacturing ecosystems and infrastructure. Integrating silicon components on a single chip with electronics manufacturing processes can dramatically reduce the footprint and the cost of optical systems and open avenues for closer integration with silicon electronics on the same chip. However, the one thing silicon photonics misses is the laser component.
Silicon is not a material that can naturally emit laser light from electrical signals. Decades of research have created silicon-based lasers with more unconventional nonlinear optical techniques. Still, they cannot match the power, efficiency, tunability, and cost-at-scale of lasers made from indium phosphide (InP) and III-V compound semiconductors.
Therefore, making a suitable laser for silicon photonics does not mean making an on-chip laser from silicon but an external laser from III-V materials such as InP. This light source will be coupled via optical fiber to the silicon components on the chip while maintaining a low enough footprint and cost for high-volume integration. The external laser typically comes in the form of an integrable tunable laser assembly (ITLA).
In contrast, the InP platform can naturally emit light and provide high-quality light sources and amplifiers. This allows for photonic system-on-chip designs that include an integrated laser on the chip. The integrated laser carries the advantage of reduced footprint and power consumption compared to an external laser. These advantages become even more helpful for PICs that need multiple laser channels.
Finally, integrated lasers enable earlier optical testing on the semiconductor wafer and die. By testing the dies and wafers directly before packaging them into a transceiver, manufacturers need only discard the bad dies rather than the whole package, which saves valuable energy, materials, and cost.
Using an external or integrated laser depends on the transceiver developer’s device requirements, supply chain, and manufacturing facilities and processes. At EFFECT Photonics, we have the facilities and expertise to provide fully-integrated InP optical systems with an integrated laser and the external laser component that a silicon photonics developer might need for their optical system.
In his recent talk at ECOC 2022, our Director of Product Management, Joost Verberk, outlined five critical parameters for laser performance.
Earlier this year, Intel Labs demonstrated an eight-wavelength laser array fully integrated on a silicon wafer. These milestones are essential for tunable DWDM because the laser arrays can allow for multi-channel transceivers that are more cost-effective when scaling up to higher speeds.
Let’s say we need a link with 1.6 Terabits/s of capacity. There are three ways we could implement it:
Multi-laser array and multi-channel solutions will become increasingly necessary to increase link capacity in coherent systems. They will not need more slots in the router faceplate while simultaneously avoiding the higher cost and complexity of increasing the speed with just a single channel.
The combination of tunable lasers and dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) allows the datacom and telecom industries to expand their network capacity without increasing their existing fiber infrastructure. Thanks to the miniaturization of coherent technology and self-tuning algorithms, many application cases—metro transport, data center interconnects, and future access networks—will eventually move towards coherent tunable pluggables.
These new application cases will have to balance the laser parameters we described early—tunability, purity, size, environmental resistance, power—depending on their material platforms, system architecture, and requirements. Some will need external lasers; some will want a fully-integrated laser. Some will need multi-laser arrays to increase capacity; others need more stringent temperature certifications.
Following these trends, at EFFECT Photonics, we are not only developing the capabilities to provide a complete, coherent transceiver solution but also the external nano-ITLA units needed by other vendors.
Tags: coherent, DBR, DFB, ECL, full integration, InP, ITLA, micro ITLA, nano ITLA, SiP, tunable
12 October 2022
2:30 pm - 3:00 pm
Joost Verberk, Director
Coherent pluggables with an optical System-on-Chip (SoC) can become vital in addressing the datacom and telecom sector needs for a new generation of distributed data center architectures. Combining the optical SoCs with reconfigurable DSPs and modern network orchestration and automation software will be a key to deploying edge data centers. For instance, technology trends such as 5G / IoT, CDNs, AR/VR and SDN / NFV 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.
This presentation will begin on Wednesday, October 12, 2022 at 2:30 PM Eastern Daylight Time. Audience members may arrive 15 minutes in advance of this time.
Insights
October 5, 2022
As they lighted the candles in their ship, the Pilgrim families traveling on the Mayflower had no idea they would help build a nation that would become a major pioneer in light technology and many other fields.
The United States features many areas with a strong photonics background, including the many companies in California’s Silicon Valley and the regions close to the country’s leading optics universities, such as Colorado, New York, Arizona, and Florida.
However, the Greater Boston area and Massachusetts state, in general, are becoming an increasingly important photonics hub with world-class universities and many successful optics and photonics initiatives and companies. Let’s talk a bit more about their legacy with light-based technology and the history of the town of Maynard with the high-tech industry.
The Boston area features many world-class universities collaborating with the government and industry to develop new photonics technology. Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Boston University, Tufts University, and Northeastern University are major research institutions in the area that lead many photonics-related initiatives.
The state of Massachusetts, in general, has also been home to several prosperous photonics businesses, and initiatives are being made to capitalize on Boston’s extensive medical industry knowledge to boost biomedical optics and photonics. Raytheon, Polaroid, and IPG Photonics are examples of Massachusetts-based businesses that promoted optical technology.
The US federal government and Massachusetts state are committing resources to get these academic and industry partners to collaborate as much as possible. In 2015, the Lab for Education and Application Prototypes (LEAP) network was established as part of a federal drive to revive American manufacturing. The Massachusetts Manufacturing Innovation Initiative, a state grant program, and AIM Photonics, the national manufacturing institution, each contributed $11.3 million to constructing labs around Massachusetts universities and colleges.
The LEAP Network objectives are to teach integrated photonics manufacturing practice, offer companies technician training and certification, encourage company engagement in the tool, process, and application upgrades, and support AIM Photonics in their manufacturing and testing.
These partnerships form a statewide ecosystem to educate the manufacturing workforce throughout the photonics supply chain. The facilities’ strategic placement next to both universities and community colleges allows them to attract students from all areas and stages of their careers, from technicians to engineers to fundamental researchers.
A trip down Route 2 into Middlesex County, 25 miles northwest of Boston, will take one past apple orchards, vineyards, and some of Massachusetts’ most stunning nature preserves before arriving at a historic mill on the Assabet River. The community around this mill, Maynard, is a charming and surprisingly historical hub of economic innovation that houses an emerging tech ecosystem.
The renowned Assabet Woolen Mill was established for textile manufacturing in 1847 by Amory Maynard, who by the age of 16 was managing his own sawmill company. Initially a carpet manufacturing plant, Maynard’s enterprise produced blankets and uniforms for the Union Army during the Civil War. The company employed immigrants from Ireland, Finland, Poland, Russia, and Italy, many of them coming to the mill for jobs as soon as they arrived in the nation. By the 1930s, the town of Maynard was recognized as one of the most multi-ethnic places in the state.
The Assabet Woolen Mill continued to create textiles until 1950. The 11-acre former mill complex, currently named Mill and Main, is the contemporary expression of the town’s evolution and relationship with innovative industry.
The Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) occupied the facility before the end of the 50s with just $70,000 cash and three engineers. From the 1960s onward, DEC became a major global supplier of computer systems and enjoyed tremendous growth. It’s hard to overstate the company’s impact on Maynard, which became the ” Mini Computer Capital of the World” in barely twenty years.
Following DEC’s departure, the mill complex was sold and rented out to a fresh group of young and ambitious computer startups, many of whom are still operating today. Since then, more people and companies have joined, noting the affordable real estate, the enjoyable commute and environs, and the obvious cluster of IT enterprises. For example, when Acacia Communications, Inc. was established in 2009 and needed a home, Maynard’s mill space was a natural fit.
Insights
September 29, 2022
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
07 November 2022 - 08 November 2022
8:00 am - 5:00 pm
Karin Bussemaker
Taking place this November in Eindhoven, Netherlands. Join the leading lights from across the integrated…
Taking place this November in Eindhoven, Netherlands. Join the leading lights from across the integrated photonics sector for one of the most influential events in the industry calendar: PIC Summit Europe.
Imagine – two whole days dedicated to discussion, collaboration, and innovation with key international opinion leaders from across our thriving sector. The conference offers a rich program – featuring keynotes from Semicon executives, EU policymakers, and the wider the PIC community to discuss a the future of the integrated photonics industry globally.
What to expect? Here are the two days at a glance:
No other event unites end-users, academics, investors, and major players from across the photonics industry in the same way.
Join us in the city of light Eindhoven, the Netherlands. The birthplace of both the light bulb factory Philips and leading lithography machine maker ASML.
At two venues: High Tech Campus Eindhoven and Technische Universiteit Eindhoven.
Tickets now available!
Supported by:
TECH TOUR | PHOTONDELTA | UNIVERSITY OF TWENTE | TU/E | INNOVATION INDUSTRIES | ING | BRAINPORT EINDHOVEN | EPIC – EUROPEAN PHOTONICS INDUSTRY CONSORTIUM |BOM | PHOTONHUB EUROPE | CITC | EFFECT PHOTONICS| FRAUNHOFER HHI | IMEC | MANTISPECTRA | NOSTICS | PHIX | SCANTINEL PHOTONICS | SMART PHOTONICS |HIGHTECHXL |SCINVIVO | PHOTONFIRST | HIGHTECHNL | LIONIX | QUIX QUANTUM | OPTICA | SIEMENS ENERGY | EFFECT PHOTONICS| HIGH TECH CAMPS
Insights
September 15, 2022
Like every other telecom network, cable networks had to change to meet the growing demand…
Like every other telecom network, cable networks had to change to meet the growing demand for data. These demands led to the development of hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) networks in the 1990s and 2000s. In these networks, optical fibers travel from the cable company hub and terminate in optical nodes, while coaxial cable connects the last few hundred meters from the optical node to nearby houses. Most of these connections were asymmetrical, giving customers more capacity to download data than upload.
That being said, the way we use the Internet has evolved over the last ten years. Users now require more upstream bandwidth thanks to the growth of social media, online gaming, video calls, and independent content creation such as video blogging. The DOCSIS standards that govern data transmission over coaxial cables have advanced quickly because of these additional needs. For instance, full-duplex transmission with symmetrical upstream and downstream channels is permitted under the most current DOCSIS 4.0 specifications.
Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) systems, which bring fiber right to the customer’s door, are also proliferating and enabling Gigabit connections quicker than HFC networks. Overall, extending optical fiber deeper into communities (see Figure 1 for a graphic example) is a critical economic driver, increasing connectivity for the rural and underserved. These investments also lead to more robust competition among cable companies and a denser, higher-performance wireless network.
Passive optical networks (PONs) are a vital technology to cost-effectively expand the use of optical fiber within access networks and make FTTH systems more viable. By creating networks using passive optical splitters, PONs avoid the power consumption and cost of active components in optical networks such as electronics and amplifiers. PONs can be deployed in mobile fronthaul and mid-haul for macro sites, metro networks, and enterprise scenarios.
Despite some success from PONs, the cost of laying more fiber and the optical modems for the end users continue to deter carriers from using FTTH more broadly across their networks. This cost problem will only grow as the industry moves into higher bandwidths, such as 50G and 100G, requiring coherent technology in the modems.
Therefore, new technology and manufacturing methods are required to make PON technology more affordable and accessible. For example, wavelength division multiplexing (WDM)-PON allows providers to make the most of their existing fiber infrastructure. Meanwhile, simplified designs for coherent digital signal processors (DSPs) manufactured at large volumes can help lower the cost of coherent PON technology for access networks.
Previous PON solutions, such as Gigabit PON (GPON) and Ethernet PON (EPON), used time-division multiplexing (TDM) solutions. In these cases, the fiber was shared sequentially by multiple channels. These technologies were initially meant for the residential services market, but they scale poorly for the higher capacity of business or carrier services. PON standardization for 25G and 50G capacities is ready but sharing a limited bitrate among multiple users with TDM technology is an insufficient approach for future-proof access networks.
This WDM-PON uses WDM multiplexing/demultiplexing technology to ensure that data signals can be divided into individual outgoing signals connected to buildings or homes. This hardware-based traffic separation gives customers the benefits of a secure and scalable point-to-point wavelength link. Since many wavelength channels are inside a single fiber, the carrier can retain very low fiber counts, yielding lower operating costs.
WDM-PON has the potential to become the unified access and backhaul technology of the future, carrying data from residential, business, and carrier wholesale services on a single platform. We discussed this converged access solution in one of our previous articles. Its long-reach capability and bandwidth scalability enable carriers to serve more customers from fewer active sites without compromising security and availability.
Migration to the WDM-PON access network does require a carrier to reassess how it views its network topology. It is not only a move away from operating parallel purpose-built platforms for different user groups to one converged access and backhaul infrastructure. It is also a change from today’s power-hungry and labor-intensive switch and router systems to a simplified, energy-efficient, and transport-centric environment with more passive optical components.
As data demands continue to grow, direct detect optical technology used in prior PON standards will not be enough. The roadmap for this update remains a bit blurry, with different carriers taking different paths. For example, future expansions might require using 25G or 50G transceivers in the cable network, but the required number of channels in the fiber might not be enough for the conventional optical band (the C-band). Such a capacity expansion would therefore require using other bands (such as the O-band), which comes with additional challenges. An expansion to other optical bands would require changes in other optical networking equipment, such as multiplexers and filters, which increases the cost of the upgrade.
An alternative solution could be upgrading instead to coherent 100G technology. An upgrade to 100G could provide the necessary capacity in cable networks while remaining in the C-band and avoiding using other optical bands. This path has also been facilitated by the decreasing costs of coherent transceivers, which are becoming more integrated, sustainable, and affordable. You can read more about this subject in one of our previous articles.
For example, the renowned non-profit R&D center CableLabs announced a project to develop a symmetric 100G Coherent PON (C-PON). According to CableLabs, the scenarios for a C-PON are many: aggregation of 10G PON and DOCSIS 4.0 links, transport for macro-cell sites in some 5G network configurations, fiber-to-the-building (FTTB), long-reach rural scenarios, and high-density urban networks.
CableLabs anticipates C-PON and its 100G capabilities to play a significant role in the future of access networks, starting with data aggregation on networks that implement a distributed access architecture (DAA) like Remote PH. You can learn more about these networks here.
The main challenge of C-PON is the higher cost of coherent modulation and detection. Coherent technology requires more complex and expensive optics and digital signal processors (DSPs). Plenty of research is happening on simplifying these coherent designs for access networks. However, a first step towards making these optics more accessible is the 100ZR standard.
100ZR is currently a term for a short-reach (~80 km) coherent 100Gbps transceiver in a QSFP pluggable size. Targeted at the metro edge and enterprise applications that do not require 400ZR solutions, 100ZR provides a lower-cost, lower-power pluggable that also benefits from compatibility with the large installed base of 50 GHz and legacy 100 GHz multiplexer systems.
Another way to reduce the cost of PON technology is through the economics of scale, manufacturing pluggable transceiver devices at a high volume to drive down the cost per device. And with greater photonic integration, even more, devices can be produced on a single wafer. This economy-of-scale principle is the same behind electronics manufacturing, which must be applied to photonics.
Researchers at the Technical University of Eindhoven and the JePPIX consortium have modeled how this economy of scale principle would apply to photonics. If production volumes can increase from a few thousand chips per year to a few million, the price per optical chip can decrease from thousands of Euros to tens of Euros. This must be the goal of the optical transceiver industry.
Integrated photonics and volume manufacturing will be vital for developing future passive optical networks. PONs will use more WDM-PON solutions for increased capacity, secure channels, and easier management through self-tuning algorithms.
Meanwhile, PONs are also moving into incorporating coherent technology. These coherent transceivers have been traditionally too expensive for end-user modems. Fortunately, more affordable coherent transceiver designs and standards manufactured at larger volumes can change this situation and decrease the cost per device.
Tags: 100G, 5G, 6G, access, access networks, aggregation, backhaul, capacity, coherent, DWDM, fronthaul, Integrated Photonics, LightCounting, live events, metro, midhaul, mobile, mobile access, mobile networks, network, optical networking, optical technology, photonic integrated chip, photonic integration, Photonics, PIC, PON, programmable photonic system-on-chip, solutions, technology, VR, WDM
13 September 2022
11:00 am - 12:30 pm
Vladimir Veljanovski
The Optical Networking Digital Symposium is a two-day event featuring Heavy Reading’s optical analysts, Sterling Perrin and Simon Stanley. Join them alongside industry experts as they discuss the most significant trends driving optical networking into 2023 and beyond.
This session will be moderated by Simon Stanley, Principal Analyst, Heavy Reading
11:00 AM Session One – Delivering Coherent Pluggable Optics from Edge to Metro and Beyond
What started out as an initiative to develop a standardized, compact and efficient coherent pluggable module for data center interconnects has spawned an ever-expanding ecosystem of solutions that are redefining carrier network architectures. The 7nm DSPs and optics developed to support 400ZR pluggable modules are being configured in ZR+ modules to support significantly longer distances and optimized for network applications from the edge to metro and beyond. The next generation of 3nm and 5nm DSPs and optics will enable a new generation of pluggable modules that will support enhanced 400G performance and reach 800G performance, including 800ZR, and cost-effective modules designed for the edge of the network.
This session will investigate the opportunities and challenges presented by this developing ecosystem of pluggable coherent modules and solutions.
Topics will include:
• The coherent pluggable ecosystem
• Pushing the ZR+ envelope
• Coherent pluggable optics for the network edge
• Driving coherent pluggable modules to 800G and beyond
11:00 AM Opening Remarks: Simon Stanley, Principal Analyst, Heavy Reading
11:10 AM Service Provider Keynote: Vivek Gaur, Vice President Engineering, Colt Technology Services
11:25 AM Sponsor Keynote: Fady Masoud, Director of Solutions Marketing, Infinera
11:35 AM Panel Discussion:
12:20 PM Audience Q&A
12:25 – 12:30 PM: Closing Remarks
SESSION 2 Begins at 12:45 PM ET
PLATINUM SPONSOR: Infinera
GOLD SPONSORS: Juniper, EFFECT Photonics
Insights
September 7, 2022
Optical fiber and dense wavelength division multiplex (DWDM) technology are moving towards the edges of…
Optical fiber and dense wavelength division multiplex (DWDM) technology are moving towards the edges of networks. In the case of new 5G networks, operators will need more fiber capacity to interconnect the increased density of cell sites, often requiring replacing legacy time-division multiplexing transmission with higher-capacity DWDM links. In the case of cable and other fixed access networks, new distributed access architectures like Remote PHY free up ports in cable operator headends to serve more bandwidth to more customers.
A report by Deloitte summarizes the reasons to expand the reach and capacity of optical access networks: “Extending fiber deeper into communities is a critical economic driver, promoting competition, increasing connectivity for the rural and underserved, and supporting densification for wireless.”
To achieve such a deep fiber deployment, operators look to DWDM solutions to expand their fiber capacity without the expensive laying of new fiber. DWDM technology has become more affordable than ever due to the availability of low-cost filters and SFP transceiver modules with greater photonic integration and manufacturing volumes. Furthermore, self-tuning technology has made the installation and maintenance of transceivers easier and more affordable.
Despite the advantages of DWDM solutions, their price still causes operators to second-guess whether the upgrade is worth it. For example, mobile fronthaul applications don’t require all 40, 80, or 100 channels of many existing tunable modules. Fortunately, operators can now choose between narrow- or full-band tunable solutions that offer a greater variety of wavelength channels to fit different budgets and network requirements.
Let’s look at what happens when a fixed access network needs to migrate to a distributed access architecture like Remote PHY.
A provider has a legacy access network with eight optical nodes, and each node services 500 customers. To give higher bandwidth capacity to these 500 customers, the provider wants to split each node into ten new nodes for fifty customers. Thus, the provider goes from having eight to eighty nodes. Each node requires the provider to assign a new DWDM channel, occupying more and more of the optical C-band. This network upgrade is an example that requires a fullband tunable module with coverage across the entire C-band to provide many DWDM channels with narrow (50 GHz) grid spacing.
Furthermore, using a fullband tunable module means that a single part number can handle all the necessary wavelengths for the network. In the past, network operators used fixed wavelength DWDM modules that must go into specific ports. For example, an SFP+ module with a C16 wavelength could only work with the C16 wavelength port of a DWDM multiplexer. However, tunable SFP+ modules can connect to any port of a DWDM multiplexer. This advantage means technicians no longer have to navigate a confusing sea of fixed modules with specific wavelengths; a single tunable module and part number will do the job.
Overall, fullband tunable modules will fit applications that need a large number of wavelength channels to maximize the capacity of fiber infrastructure. Metro transport or data center interconnects (DCIs) are good examples of applications with such requirements.
The transition to 5G and beyond will require a significant restructuring of mobile network architecture. 5G networks will use higher frequency bands, which require more cell sites and antennas to cover the same geographical areas as 4G. Existing antennas must upgrade to denser antenna arrays. These requirements will put more pressure on the existing fiber infrastructure, and mobile network operators are expected to deliver their 5G promises with relatively little expansion in their fiber infrastructure.
DWDM solutions will be vital for mobile network operators to scale capacity without laying new fiber. However, operators often regard traditional fullband tunable modules as expensive for this application. Mobile fronthaul links don’t need anything close to the 40 or 80 DWDM channels of a fullband transceiver. It’s like having a cable subscription where you only watch 10 out of the 80 TV channels.
This issue led EFFECT Photonics to develop narrowband tunable modules with just nine channels. They offer a more affordable and moderate capacity expansion that better fits the needs of mobile fronthaul networks. These networks often feature nodes that aggregate two or three different cell sites, each with three antenna arrays (each antenna provides 120° coverage at the tower) with their unique wavelength channel. Therefore, these aggregation points often need six or nine different wavelength channels, but not the entire 80-100 channels of a typical fullband module.
With the narrowband tunable option, operators can reduce their part number inventory compared to grey transceivers while avoiding the cost of a fullband transceiver.
The number of channels in a tunable module (up to 100 in the case of EFFECT Photonics fullband modules) can quickly become overwhelming for technicians in the field. There will be more records to examine, more programming for tuning equipment, more trucks to load with tuning equipment, and more verifications to do in the field. These tasks can take a couple of hours just for a single node. If there are hundreds of nodes to install or repair, the required hours of labor will quickly rack up into the thousands and the associated costs into hundreds of thousands.
Self-tuning allows technicians to treat DWDM tunable modules the same way they treat grey transceivers. There is no need for additional training for technicians to install the tunable module. There is no need to program tuning equipment or obsessively check the wavelength records and tables to avoid deployment errors on the field. Technicians only need to follow the typical cleaning and handling procedures, plug the transceiver, and the device will automatically scan and find the correct wavelength once plugged. This feature can save providers thousands of person-hours in their network installation and maintenance and reduce the probability of human errors, effectively reducing capital and operational expenditures.
Self-tuning algorithms make installing and maintaining narrowband and fullband tunable modules more straightforward and affordable for network deployment.
Fullband self-tuning modules will allow providers to deploy extensive fiber capacity upgrades more quickly than ever. However, in use cases such as mobile access networks where operators don’t need a wide array of DWDM channels, they can opt for narrowband solutions that are more affordable than their fullband alternatives. By combining fullband and narrowband solutions with self-tuning algorithms, operators can expand their networks in the most affordable and accessible ways for their budget and network requirements.
Tags: 100G, 5G, 6G, access, access networks, aggregation, backhaul, capacity, coherent, DWDM, fronthaul, Integrated Photonics, LightCounting, live events, metro, midhaul, mobile, mobile access, mobile networks, network, optical networking, optical technology, photonic integrated chip, photonic integration, Photonics, PIC, PON, programmable photonic system-on-chip, solutions, technology, VR, WDM
Insights
September 1, 2022
Everyone who has attended a major venue or event, such as a football stadium or…
Insights
August 24, 2022
Coherent transmission has become a fundamental component of optical networks to address situations where direct…
Coherent transmission has become a fundamental component of optical networks to address situations where direct detect technology cannot provide the required capacity and reach.
While direct detect transmission only uses the amplitude of the light signal, coherent optical transmission manipulates three different light properties: amplitude, phase, and polarization. These additional degrees of modulation allow for faster optical signals without compromising the transmission distance. Furthermore, coherent technology enables capacity upgrades without replacing the expensive physical fiber infrastructure on the ground.
The digital signal processor (DSP) is the electronic heart of coherent transmission systems. The fundamental function of the DSP is encoding the electronic digital data into the amplitude, phase, and polarization of the light signal and decoding said data when the signal is received. The DSP does much more than that, though: it compensates for impairments in the fiber, performs analog-to-digital conversions (and vice versa), corrects errors, encrypts data, and monitors performance. And recently, DSPs are taking on more advanced functions such as probabilistic constellation shaping or dynamic bandwidth allocation, which enable improved reach and performance.
Given its vital role in coherent optical transmission, we at EFFECT Photonics want to provide an explainer of what goes on inside the DSP chip of our optical transceivers.
Even though we colloquially call the chip a “DSP”, it is an electronic engine that performs much more than just signal processing. Some of the different functions of this electronic engine (diagram below) are:
We must highlight that each of these blocks has its own specialized circuitry and algorithms, so each is a separate piece of intellectual property. Therefore, developing the entire electronic engine requires ownership or access to each of these intellectual properties.
Having clarified first all the different parts of a transceiver’s electronic engine, we can now talk more specifically about the actual DSP block that encodes/decodes the data and compensates for distortions and impairments in the optical fiber. We will describe some of the critical functions of the DSP in the order in which they happen during signal transmission. Receiving the signal would require these functions to occur in the opposite order, as shown in the diagram below.
When transmitting, the signal goes through the digital-to-analog conversion after this whole DSP sequence. When receiving the signal, it goes through the inverse analog-to-digital conversation and then through the DSP sequence.
This is an oversimplification, but we can broadly classify the two critical areas of improvement for DSPs into two categories.
The entire field of communication technology can arguably be summarized with a single question: how can we transmit more information into a single frequency-limited signal over the longest possible distance?
DSP developers have many tools in their kit to answer this question. For example, they can transmit more data using more states in their quadrature-amplitude modulation process. The simplest kind of QAM (4-QAM) uses four different states (usually called constellation points), combining two different intensity levels and two different phases of light.
By using more intensity levels and phases, more bits can be transmitted in one go. State-of-the-art commercially available 400ZR transceivers typically use 16-QAM, with sixteen different constellation points that arise from combining four different intensity levels and four phases. However, this increased transmission capacity comes at a price: a signal with more modulation orders is more susceptible to noise and distortions. That’s why these transceivers can transmit 400Gbps over 100km but not over 1000km.
One of the most remarkable recent advances in DSPs to increase the reach of light signals is probabilistic constellation shaping (PCS). In the typical 16-QAM modulation used in coherent transceivers, each constellation point has the same probability of being used. This is inefficient since the outer constellation points that require more power have the same probability as the inner constellation points that require lower power.
PCS uses the low-power inner constellation points more frequently, and the outer constellation points less frequently, as shown in Figure 5. This feature provides many benefits, including improved tolerance to distortions and easier system optimization to specific bit transmission requirements. If you want to know more about it, please read the explainers here and here.
Increases in transmission reach and efficiency must be balanced with power consumption and thermal management. Energy efficiency is the biggest obstacle in the roadmap to scale high-speed coherent transceivers into Terabit speeds.
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. Rockley Photonics researchers estimate that a future electronic switch filled with 800G modules would draw around 1 kW of power just for the optical modules.
Around 50% of a coherent transceiver’s power consumption goes into the DSP chip. Scaling to higher bandwidths leads to even more losses and energy consumption from the DSP chip, and its radiofrequency (RF) interconnects with the optical engine. DSP chips must therefore be adaptable and smart, using the least amount of energy to encode/decode information. You can learn more about this subject in one of our previous articles. The interconnects with the optical engine are another area that can see further optimization, and we discuss these improvements in our article about optoelectronic co-design.
In summary, 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.
Tags: 100G, 5G, 6G, access, access networks, aggregation, backhaul, capacity, coherent, DWDM, fronthaul, Integrated Photonics, live events, metro, midhaul, mobile, mobile access, mobile networks, network, optical networking, optical technology, photonic integrated chip, photonic integration, Photonics, PIC, PON, programmable photonic system-on-chip, solutions, technology, VR, WDM
19 September 2022 - 21 September 2022
10:00 am - 5:00 pm
Join EFFECT Photonics from September 19 to 21, 2022 at ECOC 2022 in Basel, Switzerland, Europe’s largest optical communications…
Join EFFECT Photonics from September 19 to 21, 2022 at ECOC 2022 in Basel, Switzerland, Europe’s largest optical communications conference, to discover firsthand how our technology is transforming where light meets digital. Visit us at Booth #612 to learn how EFFECT Photonics full portfolio of optical building blocks including ultra-pure light tunable lasers, DSPs and ASICs, subassemblies and complete integrated solutions are disrupting the status quo in 5G and Beyond, Access Network Coherent and Cloud and Cloud Edge applications.
EFFECT Photonics will participate in this year’s ECOC2022 conference. Presentations include:
Presenter: Joost Verberk, Director of Product Management
Date: Monday, September 19 at 12 pm (Product Focus Session)
This session will discuss how tunable lasers and DWDM are helping to expand capacity for metro, DCI and access applications as networks move towards coherent tunable pluggables.
Presenter: Harald Graber, Chief Commercial Officer
Date: Tuesday, September 20 at 2:30 pm (Market Focus Session)
With new data centers closer to the edge, even more connectivity is essential. Hyperscalers need reliable, scalable solutions where low power and affordability are critical. Current solutions cannot adequately meet this need, and future solutions will require full end-to-end control over the light sources as well as Digital Signal Processing to address necessary power optimization needs. Join this session to learn how best to optimize edge computing/data center networks for connectivity and system performance demands.
Be sure to stop by Booth 612 to tune your own PIC with EFFECT Photonics technology. In this interactive and dynamic demonstration, participants can explore first-hand the power of EFFECT Photonics solutions utilizing various parameters and product configurations.
This live demonstration will depict how central offices and radio heads in today’s telecommunications networks typically communicate and operate telecommunications under differing weather conditions. See how EFFECT Photonics SFP modules and patented NarroWave technology can remotely monitor, detect and efficiently troubleshoot any problems without the need for physical on-site assistance.
Our experts are also available to discuss customer needs and how EFFECT Photonics might be able to assist. To schedule a meeting, please email info@effectphotonics.com
Where Light Meets Digital – EFFECT Photonics is a highly vertically integrated, independent photonic semiconductor company, addressing the need for high-performance, affordable solutions driven by the ever-increasing demand for bandwidth and faster data transfer capabilities. For more information, visit www.effectphotonics.com.
Tags: 5G, ECOC, ECOC2022, IoT
Insights
August 10, 2022
Paris may be the more well-known City of Light, but we may argue that Eindhoven…
Paris may be the more well-known City of Light, but we may argue that Eindhoven has had a closer association with light and light-based technology. The earliest Dutch match manufacturers, the Philips light bulb factory, and ASML’s enormous optical lithography systems were all located in Eindhoven during the course of the city’s 150-year history. And today, Eindhoven is one of the worldwide hubs of the emerging photonics industry. The heritage of Eindhoven’s light technology is one that EFFECT Photonics is honored to continue into the future.
Eindhoven’s nickname as the Lichtstad did not originate from Philips factories but from the city’s earlier involvement in producing lucifer friction matches. In 1870, banker Christiaan Mennen and his brother-in-law Everardus Keunen set up the first large-scale match factory in the Netherlands in Eindhoven’s Bergstraat. In the following decades, the Mennen & Keunen factory acquired other match factories, and promoted the merger of the four biggest factories in the country to form the Vereenigde Nederlandsche Lucifersfabriken (VNLF). After 1892, the other three factories shut down, and all the match production was focused on Eindhoven. Over the course of the next century, the Eindhoven match factory underwent a number of ownership and name changes until ceasing operations in 1979.
Two decades after the founding of the original match factory, businessman Gerard Philips bought a small plant at the Emmasingel in Eindhoven with the financial support of his father, Frederik, a banker. After a few years, Gerard’s brother Anton joined the company and helped it expand quickly. The company succeeded in its first three decades by focusing almost exclusively on a single product: metal-filament light bulbs.
Over time, Philips began manufacturing various electro-technical products, including vacuum tubes, TVs, radios, and electric shavers. Philips was also one of the key companies that helped develop the audio cassette tape was Philips. In the 1960s, Philips joined the electronic revolution that swept the globe and proposed early iterations of the VCR cassette tape.
In 1997, Philips relocated their corporate headquarters outside of Eindhoven, leaving a significant void in the city. Philips was the primary factor in Eindhoven’s growth, attracting many people to the city to work.
Fortunately, Philips’ top-notch research and development led to several major spinoff companies, such as NXP and ASML. While ASML is already well-known across Eindhoven and is arguably the city’s largest employer, it might just be the most important tech company the world hasn’t heard of. In order to produce the world’s electronics, ASML builds enormous optical lithography systems that are shipped to the largest semiconductor facilities on earth. The scale of these systems requires engineers from all fields—electrical, optical, mechanical, and materials—to develop them, and that has attracted top talent from all over the world to Eindhoven. Thanks to their growth, Eindhoven has developed into a major center for expats in the Netherlands.
As ASML grew into a global powerhouse, the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) worked tirelessly over the last 30 years to develop the light technology of the future: photonics. Photonics is used to create chips like the electronics inside your computers and phones, but instead of using electricity, these chips use laser light. Replacing electricity with light dramatically increases the speed of data transmission while also decreasing its power consumption. These benefits would lead photonics to have a significant impact in several industries, especially telecommunications.
The photonics discoveries occurring in Eindhoven have been making strides in the lab for the last 30 years, and now they are finally becoming businesses. The founders of EFFECT Photonics were once TU/e students who wanted to take their lab research outside into the real world. Like us, there are many other companies in who are trying to bring new and exciting technologies into market, such as SMART Photonics (semiconductor manufacturing), Lightyear (solar electric cars), or Aircision (free space optics). Many of these companies have gathered in the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven and the PhotonDelta cluster, which gathers photonics companies in the Netherlands. The figure below provides a comprehensive picture of the entire PhotonDelta Ecosystem.
The TU/e environment has also championed processes that allow integrated photonics to become more widespread and easier to develop for market applications. The JePPIX consortium has aimed at creating a common platform of indium-phosphide chip design and manufacturing blocks that can become a “language” that every photonics developer in Europe can follow to make their devices. Meanwhile, photonics research and develop continues on many fronts, including biomedical devices, next-generation telecommunications, and improving photonics manufacturing’s compatibility with electronics. Hopefully, additional companies will emerge in the next years to bring these novel technologies to market.
As you can see, Eindhoven has a long history with light, from matches to light bulbs to TVs to optical lithography and photonics. The heritage of Eindhoven’s light technology is one that EFFECT Photonics is honored to carry into the future.
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
Insights
July 27, 2022
Access networks everywhere are scaling. 5G and IoT promise to interconnect exponentially more devices than…
Access networks everywhere are scaling. 5G and IoT promise to interconnect exponentially more devices than before, with higher speed and latencies. This puts more pressure than ever on fixed and mobile access networks.
In fixed access, there will be a significant expansion in the deployment of fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) links and passive optical networks (PONs). Meanwhile, power-hungry business customers require capacity expansions to 100G and beyond. In the mobile sector, carriers must deliver on their 5G promises without the expensive deployment of new fiber infrastructure. The ever-increasing Internet traffic combined with the flat or declining revenue margins makes scaling up more difficult.
Coherent solutions can help cope with some of these requirements, but their size and expense made them impractical to implement in access networks. In the last few years, the miniaturization of coherent transceivers enables cost and size reductions that made this technology more accessible.
Coherent solutions are still a decade away from becoming mainstream in mobile access networks, but at least they will soon have an impact in cable networks, business services, and edge data centers. Given the continuing advances in standardization and the focus on more affordable components for shorter links, a future with coherent optics in the access network domain is upon us.
The initial rollout of 5G has already happened in most developed countries, with many operators upgrading their 1G SFP to 10G SFP+ devices and deploying more wavelength division multiplexing (WDM). Mobile networks must now move to the next phase of 5G deployments: this will require installing more and smaller base stations to increase the number of devices connected to the network exponentially.
These more mature phases of 5G deployment will require operators to scale fiber capacity cost-effectively. The 25G tunable transceivers used in this new deployment phase support a typical reach of 10 km, reaching up to 15 or even 20 km with extra amplification and compensation. For now, that capacity of 25G and 10-20km distances seems to be the sweet spot for radio access network transport.
As more and more 5G antennas are deployed and more 5G users are connected, traffic in radio access networks will keep growing. This increase in traffic demand will translate up through successive network layers to the core, passing through backhaul and sometimes mid-haul stages. This will require an increase in transport capacity beyond 25G, but for now 50G and 100G transceivers are being used in limited quantities by operators in support of massive MIMO and packet fronthaul. Both will remain niche products with volumes far smaller than the mainstream 25G devices.
Insights
July 14, 2022
Before 2020, Apple made its computer processors with discrete components. In other words, electronic components…
Before 2020, Apple made its computer processors with discrete components. In other words, electronic components were manufactured on separate chips, and then these chips were assembled into a single package. However, the interconnections between the different chips produced losses and incompatibilities that made the device less efficient. After 2020, starting with Apple’s M1 processor, they now fully integrate all components on a single chip, avoiding losses and incompatibilities.
Apple’s fully integrated processor consumes a third of the power and lower costs than their older processors while still providing similar performance. EFFECT Photonics does something similar to what Apple did, but with optical components instead of electronic components. By integrating all the optical components (lasers, detectors, modulators, etc.) in a single system on a chip, we can minimize the losses and make the device more efficient. This approach is what we call photonic System-on-Chip (SoC).
By integrating all optical components on a single chip, we also shift the complexity from the assembly process to the much more efficient and scalable semiconductor wafer process. Assembling and packaging a device by interconnecting multiple photonic chips increases assembly complexity and costs. On the other hand, combining and aligning optical components on a wafer at a high volume is much easier, which drives down the device’s cost. Testing is another aspect that becomes more efficient and scalable when manufacturing at the wafer level.
When faults are found earlier in the testing process, fewer resources and energy are spent processing defective chips. Ideally, testing should happen not only on the final, packaged transceiver but in the earlier stages of photonic SoC fabrication, such as measuring after wafer processing or cutting the wafer into smaller dies. Full photonic integration enables earlier optical testing on the semiconductor wafer and dies. By testing the dies and wafers directly before packaging, manufacturers need only discard the bad dies rather than the whole package, which saves time, and cost and is more energy-efficient and sustainable.
For example, EFFECT Photonics reaps these benefits in its production processes. 100% of electrical testing on the photonic SoCs happens at the wafer level, and our unique integration technology allows for 90% of optical testing on the wafer. The real-world applications of SoCs are practically limitless and priceless. Electronic SoCs are used in most, if not all, portable devices, such as smartphones, cameras, tablets, and other wireless technologies. SoCs are also frequently used in equipment involved in the Internet of Things, embedded systems, and, of course, photonics. Data center interconnects are an excellent example of an application that benefits from a photonic SoC approach. As DCIs demand higher performance and reach, it’s no longer sufficient to have a solution that integrates just some parts of a system.
That is why EFFECT Photonics’ business strategy aims to solve the interconnect challenges through a holistic photonic SoC approach that understands the interdependence of system elements. By combining the photonic SoC with highly optimized packaging with cost-effective electronics, we are building a high production volume platform that can meet the demands of the datacom sector.
Tags: DWDM, Integrated Photonics, network, optical networking, optical technology, photonic integrated chip, photonic integration, photonic system-on-chip, PIC, solutions, technology
Insights
July 7, 2022
The increasing use of data and fiercely price-conscious and multimedia-hungry business subscribers can limit revenue…
The increasing use of data and fiercely price-conscious and multimedia-hungry business subscribers can limit revenue opportunities for the network provider industry. Providers must therefore look elsewhere to grow their customer base, open new revenue streams, and boost margins. So how can they adapt their business strategies and achieve growth objectives?
Just as operators scale up high-capacity data center interconnects to cope with these needs, providers can add Ethernet services for high-capacity services. These can offer a differentiated and competitive service to corporate customers, ranging from 1G to 100G and beyond. Not only will Ethernet services add a cost-effective alternative to existing services, but they also ensure business Ethernet offerings are set up to complement wide area networks and hybrid network services.
According to Ovum, the global enterprise Ethernet services market will grow at 10.7% CAGR, exceeding $70bn by 2020 (Ovum’s Ethernet Services Forecast, Sep 2015), and is now the de facto wide-area network data connectivity technology. Ethernet will be a significant portion of the data service market driven by enthusiasm for higher bandwidth services. This growth will continue as we adopt more cloud-based applications and enterprises embrace digital transformation. Business Ethernet solutions can be further boosted with tunable DWDM transceivers.
With applications and data volumes exploding in organizations of all types and sizes, there is an increasing need for 1GbE+ connections, with 10GbE+ connectivity for company headquarters and even 100GbE+ connections for data center connectivity. Specifically, demand is being driven by the proliferation of bandwidth-hungry applications. An MRI scan, for example, can be a 300GB file, which would take around 7 hours to download over a 100Mbps connection. Over a 10GbE link, that time falls to just 4 minutes and 28 seconds on a 100GbE link – this can be the difference between life and death when a consultant needs to make a time-critical decision on how to treat their patient best.
Enterprises know all about cost-containment and budget constraints. Virtual private networks (VPNs) based on legacy MPLS protocols have their place when delivering wide-area connectivity. These VPNs can offer any-to-any connectivity and scale to thousands of sites – but, at the higher speeds needed for high-bandwidth applications, they can be significantly more expensive than business Ethernet to deploy and maintain.
In addition, the MPLS routers needed for IP VPN have acquired more and more protocols and complexity over the last few decades. The cost of implementing all of these protocols, and securing them against attack, has driven leading service providers to demand a radically more straightforward way of building networks.
With business Ethernet, the network infrastructure and management can be unified under Ethernet protocol, making the network easier to plan, deploy and manage at scale. This means fewer routers, more remotely programmable services, and fewer truck rolls resulting in a lower cost per bit than comparable VPN solutions. These savings scale across 1GbE, 10GbE, and 100GbE connections with less CAPEX investment, helping to increase the predictability of delivery costs over time. WDM solutions can further boost this capacity.
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, many IT executives overlook the importance of fast, high-bandwidth wide-area connectivity to make cloud-based applications work as they should.
These needs might require businesses with huge traffic loads to upgrade to 25G, 100G, or even 400G speeds. These capacity needs would require coherent technology. Fortunately, advances in electronic and photonic integration have miniaturized coherent line card transponders into pluggable modules the size of a large USB stick.
Many of these business applications will require links between 25 Gbps and 100 Gbps that span several tens of kilometers to connect to the network provider’s headend. For these sites, the 400ZR pluggables that have become mainstream in datacom applications are not cost-effective when utilization is so low. This is where 100ZR technology comes into play.
100ZR is currently a marketing term for a short-reach (~80 km) coherent 100Gbps in a QSFP pluggable. Targeted at the metro edge and enterprise applications that do not require 400Gbps, 100ZR provides a lower-cost, lower-power pluggable that also benefits from compatibility with the large installed base of 50 GHz and legacy 100 GHz DWDM/ROADM line systems.
Businesses that need to aggregate many sites and branches into their networks will likely require tunable transceiver solutions to interconnect them. The number of available channels in tunable modules can quickly become overwhelming for technicians in the field. There will be more records to examine, more programming for tuning equipment, more trucks to load with tuning equipment, and more verifications to do in the field. These tasks can take a couple of hours just for a single node. If there are hundreds of nodes to install or repair, the required hours of labor will quickly rack up into the thousands and the associated costs into hundreds of thousands. Self-tuning modules significantly overcome these issues and make network deployment and maintenance more straightforward and affordable.
Self-tuning allows technicians to treat DWDM tunable modules the same way they would grey transceivers. There is no need for additional training for technicians to install the tunable module. There is no need to program tuning equipment. There is no need to obsessively check the wavelength records and tables to avoid deployment errors on the field. Technicians only need to follow the typical cleaning and handling procedures, plug the transceiver, and the device will automatically scan and find the correct wavelength once plugged. This feature can save providers thousands of person-hours in their network installation and maintenance and reduce the probability of human errors, effectively reducing capital and operational expenditures (OPEX).
With business Ethernet, one can set up super-fast connections for customers and connect their locations and end-users with any cloud-based services they use. Business Ethernet solutions can be further boosted with tunable DWDM transceivers. If business future-proof their networks with upgrades like 100ZR transceivers, they can scale up connectivity seamlessly to ensure that applications always provide an excellent end-user experience. That connectivity is never a limiting factor for customers’ cloud strategies. As the business sector seeks to upgrade to greater capacity and easier management, tunable and coherent transceivers will be vital in addressing their needs.
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, PIC, PON, programmable photonic system-on-chip, solutions, technology
News
July 6, 2022
As part of the Welsh Government’s efforts to ensure all residents have access to fast…
As part of the Welsh Government’s efforts to ensure all residents have access to fast and reliable digital infrastructure, EFFECT Photonics is assisting with the roll out of 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) services in hard-to-reach areas in Wales. Led by Vodafone, the project seeks to deliver broadband connectivity to 422 households in Anglesey, an island off the northwest coast of Wales. This is the latest collaboration between EFFECT Photonics and Vodafone, with the two companies already working together to bring 5G connectivity in the Netherlands.
The project will be carried out over two phases during an 18-month period. It is supported by the government’s Local Broadband Fund (LBF) as well as the Isle of Anglesey County Council and North Wales Economic Ambition Board. In addition to EFFECT Photonics and Vodafone, Bangor University’s Digital Signal Processing (DSP) Centre for Excellence is a supplier along with others. EFFECT Photonics and Bangor University have also partnered on the DESTINI project, for the development of an algorithm which can be introduced into existing telecommunications networks to expedite 5G connectivity.
“Photonics technology is an ideal solution for fixed wireless access due to its ability to provide increased bandwidth density with less energy consumption over significant distances,” said Joost Verberk, Director of Product Management, EFFECT Photonics. “We look forward to collaborating with the Welsh government, along with Vodafone and Bangor University once again, to bring 5G broadband access to areas never seemed possible before.”
EFFECT Photonics SFP+ Modules and NarroWave Technology
Based on Indium Phosphide technology, the EFFECT Photonics 10 Gbps Narrow Tunable SFP+ Transceiver Module leverages the company’s unique Photonics Integrated Circuit (PIC) technology. It features EFFECT Photonics NarroWave technology, which allows operators to set up, monitor and control remote SFP+ modules from the central office, without making any hardware or software changes in the field.
Tags: 5G, access networks, coherent, connectivity, cost-effective, DESTNI, DWDM, FWA, integration, NarroWave, network, Networks, photonic integration, Photonics, pluggable, reach, telecommunication, Transceiver, Tunable SFP+, Vodafone, Wales, Welsh, Welsh Government News
July 1, 2022
EFFECT Photonics announced today the appointment of Roberto Marcoccia as Interim Chief Executive Officer, effective…
Insights
June 29, 2022
The 5G network revolution promises to fulfill the capacity needs that previous cellular generations could…
The 5G network revolution promises to fulfill the capacity needs that previous cellular generations could no longer provide to the ever-increasing customer demands. This network generation is expected to revolutionize the concept of telecommunication and bring the most anticipated services of larger bandwidth, higher speed, and reduced latency as part of the modern cellular network. 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:
5G promises to interconnect exponentially more devices than before, with higher speed and latencies. As a result, 5G edge network bandwidth requirements can reach up to 100 times more than 4G. These requirements will put more pressure on the existing fiber infrastructure, and mobile network operators are expected to deliver their 5G promises with relatively little expansion in their fiber infrastructure.
The initial rollout of 5G has already happened in most developed countries, with operators switching from 1G SFP transceivers and grey transceivers to 10G SFP+ or wavelength division multiplexing (WDM). Mobile networks must move to the next phase of 5G deployments, which will exponentially increase the number of devices connected to the network. These more mature phases of 5G deployment will require operators to scale capacity cost-effectively. The move to 25G tunable optics in fronthaul networks will enable this expansion in capacity in an affordable way and help promote a long-awaited convergence between mobile and fixed access networks.
The move from 4G to 5G networks saw many operators upgrade their 10G grey transceivers to tunable 10G transceivers and 25G grey transceivers to make the most of their fiber infrastructure. However, as the 5G rollout moves into a more mature phase, the demands of fronthaul networks will often require even greater capacity from fiber infrastructure.
These future demands are a key reason why South Korea’s service providers decided to future-proof their fiber infrastructure and invested in 10G and 25G WDM technology since the early stages of their 5G rollout. Over time, providers in other countries will find themselves fiber-limited and turn towards tunable technologies. These trends are why LightCounting forecasts that the 25G DWDM market will provide the most significant revenue opportunity in the coming five years.
These 25G tunable transceivers support a typical reach of 10 km. It can reach up to 15 or even 20 km with extra amplification and compensation. Maximizing the capacity of fronthaul fiber will not only be beneficial for mobile network providers and telecom business developers, system architectures, equipment manufacturers, and product developers.
The transitions to 3G and 4G relied heavily on more efficient use of broader RF spectrum blocks. These transitions were as simple for many cell sites as changing the appropriate radio line card at a base station unit. The same cannot be said about the transition to 5G. Particularly this second phase of 5G deployment will require a more profound restructuring of mobile network architecture. These mature 5G networks will use higher frequency bands, which require the deployment of more cell sites and antennas to cover the same geographical areas as 4G. In contrast, existing antennas must upgrade to denser antenna arrays.
The characteristics of this second 5G deployment mean that operators must deploy larger-bandwidth channels and more total channels due to the additional base stations. DWDM is an excellent fit for interconnecting these new smaller cell sites since it allows operators to quickly increase their number of channels without having to lay out new and expensive fiber infrastructure. Thanks to the 25G capacity, these additional channels can be easily aggregated into the fronthaul transport network without being limited by fiber infrastructure.
Carriers that provide both fixed and mobile network services may often have to deal with situations in which their fixed and mobile access networks compete against each other. Since these networks often use different technology standards and even transmission media (e.g., legacy coaxial networks in fixed access), these carriers often have to build additional and arguably redundant optical infrastructure.
These carriers have long dreamed of merging their fixed and mobile network infrastructures under the same standards and transmission pipes. Such solutions reduce the need to build and manage redundant infrastructure. The expansion of fiber infrastructure and WDM technology might finally provide them with the opportunity to do so.
Passive optical networks (PON) have become a popular solution to implement fiber-to-the-home solutions. These networks’ bandwidth and latency requirements are leading to the standardization of 25G PONs and WDM-PON technology. Now that both mobile and fixed access are considering 25G WDM solutions, it might be a good time to revisit the subject of convergence, as together, this network will offer various quality services such as communication, entertainment, and data acquisition without any terminal, application, network, and location limitation.
25G tunable optics will become an industry standard for mobile fronthaul in the coming years. They allow operators to make the most of their existing fiber infrastructure, maximizing bandwidth and increasing the network’s ability to aggregate more signals from smaller and more numerous 5G base stations. For certain carriers, they could enable a future converged fixed-access network that simplifies the installation and management of their infrastructure. As shown by the example of South Korean network operators, it pays off to anticipate all these future demands and invest in a future-proof network that can scale up quickly.
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, PIC, PON, programmable photonic system-on-chip, solutions, technology
Insights
June 22, 2022
Imagine a couple of small trucks moving along a country road in opposite directions, carrying…
Imagine a couple of small trucks moving along a country road in opposite directions, carrying goods between factories and consumers. As the population grows and demand increases, the trucks grow in number, and diversity of goods and traffic increases. City planners must start adding lanes until, eventually the tiny country road has become a large multi-lane highway with 18-wheelers moving vast volumes of different types of merchandise every day. A similar rapid expansion in ‘cargo’ has happened in telecommunications.
The telecommunications industry and service providers, in particular, have faced a dramatic and very rapid increase in the volume and type of data their systems must handle. Networks built initially to transmit soundwaves as electrical signals from one phone to another were now faced with managing data and video in real-time from many devices. Within approximately 30 years, we have moved from the introduction of the Internet and the creation of the Worldwide Web to the rollout of 5G wireless technology and the Internet-of-Things (IoT), through which virtually all devices can theoretically be interconnected.
Handling this exponentially increasing data traffic has required massive contributions from fiber optics and optical communications systems. In these systems, laser light carries much higher data transmission rates over greater distances than electrical signals. To encode the data into light, transmit it, and decode it back into electrical signals upon receipt, optical communication systems rely on optical transceivers. Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) is a transceiver technology developed around 20 years ago that dramatically increases the amount of data transmitted over existing fiber networks. Data from various signals are separated, encoded on different wavelengths, and put together (multiplexed) in a single optical fiber.
The wavelengths are separated again and reconverted into the original digital signals at the receiving end. In other words, DWDM allows different data streams to be sent simultaneously over a single optical fiber without requiring new cables to be laid. In a way, it’s like adding more lanes to the information highway without having to build new roads!
The tremendous expansion in data volume afforded with DWDM can be seen compared to other optical methods. A standard transceiver, often called a grey transceiver, is a single-channel device – each fiber has a single laser source. You can transmit 10 Gbps with grey optics. Coarse Wavelength Division Multiplexing (CWDM) has multiple channels, although far fewer than possible with DWDM. For example, with a 4-channel CWDM, you can transmit 40 Gbps. DWDM can accommodate up to 100 channels.
You can transmit 1 Tbps or one trillion bps at that capacity – 100 times more data than grey optics and 25 times more than CWDM. While the volume of data transmitted with DWDM is impressive, demand will continue to grow as we move toward IoT and 5G. Adding additional optical transceivers with different wavelengths to a fixed-wavelength DWDM system can significantly increase costs. Tunable DWDM transceivers allow you to control the wavelength (color) that the laser channel emits, adding flexibility and reducing cost. However, two obstacles prevented the broader deployment of DWDM technology.
First of all, installing and maintaining many new DWDM optical links was a time-consuming and costly process. Fortunately, the telecom industry developed a new weapon to face these challenges: self-tuning DWDM modules. Self-tuning DWDM modules minimize the network’s time-to-service by eliminating additional installation tasks such as manual tuning and record verification and reducing the potential for human error. They are host-agnostic and can plug into any third-party host equipment.
Furthermore, tunability standards allow modules from different vendors to communicate with each other, avoiding compatibility issues and simplifying upgrade choices. Self-tuning modules made the deployment and operation of DWDM links faster, simpler, and more affordable. The second issue had to do with size. DWDM modules were traditionally too large, so plugging them into a router required sacrificing roughly half of the expensive router faceplate capacity. Telecom operators could not accept such a trade-off. Advances in electronic and photonic integration overcame these trade-offs, miniaturizing coherent line card transponders into pluggable modules the size of a large USB stick.
Few companies worldwide supply DWDM technology with such compact sizes and self-tuning features. EFFECT Photonics is among them, and its tunable and cost-effective DWDM technologies will act as enablers of 5G and IoT, bringing the future to you today.
Tags: DWDM, Integrated Photonics, optical networking, optical technology, photonic integrated chip, photonic integration, PIC, programmable photonic system-on-chip
News
June 16, 2022
Tunable SFP+ modules powered by photonics System-on-Chip (SoC) technology successfully tested on live Dutch network…
Insights
June 15, 2022
With the increasing demand for cloud-based applications, datacom providers are pushing forward with expanding their…
With the increasing demand for cloud-based applications, datacom providers are pushing forward with expanding their distributed computing networks. Therefore, they and telecom provider partners are looking for data center interconnect (DCI) solutions that are faster and more affordable than before to ensure that connectivity between metro and regional facilities does not become a bottleneck.
Energy usage, space, simplicity, and cost-effectiveness all impact the efficiency of DCI infrastructure. These solutions must consider watts per bit, rack space, and simplified provisioning and operating expenditure. Previously, direct detect technology could fulfill these requirements for short-reach DCIs inside data centers and campuses. However, achieving the reach and bandwidths required for edge and metro DCIs required external amplifiers and dispersion compensators that increased the cost and complexity of network operations.
At the same time, advances in electronic and photonic integration allowed longer reach coherent technology to be miniaturized into QSFP-DD and OSFP form factors. This enabled the transport of 100G and 400G connections over a single wavelength and several hundreds of kilometers, which is ideal for edge and metro DCI networks. Provider operations teams found the simplicity of coherent pluggables very attractive. There was no need to install and maintain additional amplifiers and compensators as in direct detect: a single coherent transceiver plugged into a router could fulfill the requirements.
In the coming decade, the shorter-reach DCI links will also require upgrades to 400G, 800G, and Terabit speeds, and at those speeds, coherent technology comes close to matching the energy consumption of direct detect. This would make it competitive even for shorter links.
The advances in electronic and photonic integration allowed coherent technology for metro DCIs to be miniaturized into QSFP-DD and OSFP form factors. This progress allowed the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) to create the 400ZR and ZR+ standards for 400G DWDM pluggable modules. With small enough modules to pack a router faceplate densely, the datacom sector could profit from a 400ZR solution for high-capacity data center interconnects of up to 80km. If needed, extended reach 400ZR+ pluggables can cover several hundreds of kilometers. As an example of their success, Cignal AI forecasts that 400ZR shipments will dominate in the edge applications, as shown in Figure 3.
Further improvements in integration can further boost the reach and efficiency of coherent transceivers. For example, by integrating all photonic functions on a single chip, including lasers and optical amplifiers, EFFECT Photonics’ photonic System-On-Chip (SoC) technology can achieve higher transmit power levels and longer distances while keeping the smaller QSFP-DD form factor, power consumption, and cost.
The campus DCI segment, featuring distances below ten kilometers, was squarely the domain of direct detect products when the standard speed of these links was 100Gbps. No amplifiers nor compensators were needed for these shorter distances, so direct detect transceivers are as simple to deploy and maintain as coherent ones. However, at 400Gbps speeds, the power consumption of coherent technology is much closer to that of direct detect PAM-4 solutions.
This gap in power consumption is expected to disappear at 800Gbps, as shown in the figure below. For Terabit speeds, the prediction is that coherent transceivers will be more efficient. Furthermore, as the volume production of coherent transceivers increases, their price will also become competitive with direct detect solutions. Overall, coherent transceivers are expected to scale up better in future upgrades.
Below Terabit speeds, direct detect technology (both NRZ and PAM-4) will likely dominate the intra-DCI space (also called data center fabric) in the coming years. In this space, links span less than two kilometers, and for particularly short links (< 300 meters), affordable multimode fiber (MMF) is frequently used.
Nevertheless, moving to larger, more centralized data centers (such as hyperscale data centers) is lengthening intra-DCI links. Instead of transferring data directly from one data center building to another, new data centers first move data to a central hub. So even if the building you want to connect to might be 200 meters away, the fiber runs to a hub that might be one or two kilometers away. In other words, intra-DCI links are becoming campus DCI links, which requires their single-mode fiber solutions.
On top of these changes, the upgrades to Terabit speeds in the coming decade will also see coherent solutions challenge the power consumption of direct detect transceivers. PAM-4 direct detect transceivers that fulfill the speed requirements require digital signal processors (DSPs) and more complex lasers that will be less efficient and affordable than previous generations of direct detect technology. With coherent technology scaling up in volume and having greater flexibility and performance, one can make the argument that it will reach cost-competitiveness in this space, too.
Unsurprisingly, the decision of using coherent or direct detect technology for DCIs boils down to the reach and capacity needs. Coherent is already established as the solution for metro DCIs and is already gaining ground in the campus DCI segment for 800G and Terabit speeds. With the move to Terabit speeds and scaling production volumes, it could also become cost-competitive inside the data center too. Overall, the datacom sector is moving towards coherent technology, and it pays off to have this in mind when upgrading data center links.
Tags: 800G, access networks, coherent, cost, cost-effective, Data center, distributed computing, edge and metro DCIs, integration, Intra DCI, license, metro, miniaturized, photonic integration, Photonics, pluggable, power consumption, power consumption SFP, reach, Terabit
News
June 14, 2022
As a leading provider of highly integrated photonics solutions for optical communication products, EFFECT Photonics…
Insights
June 2, 2022
Optical signals are moving deeper and deeper into access networks. Achieving the ambitious performance goals…
Optical signals are moving deeper and deeper into access networks. Achieving the ambitious performance goals of 5G architectures requires more optics than ever between small cell sites. As stated in a recent report by Deloitte, “extending fiber optics deeper into remote communities is a critical economic driver, promoting competition, increasing connectivity for the rural and underserved, and supporting densification for wireless.”
However, there are cases in which fiber is not cost-effective to deploy. For example, a network carrier might need to quickly increase their access network capacity for a big festival, and there is no point in deploying extra fiber. In many remote areas, the customer base is so small that the costly deployment of fiber will not produce a return on investment. These situations must be addressed with some kind of wireless access solution. Carriers have used fixed microwave links for the longest time to handle these situations.
However, radio microwave frequencies might not be enough as the world demands greater internet speeds and simply changing over to higher carrier frequencies will limit the reach of microwave links. On top of that, the radio spectrum is quite crowded, and a carrier might not have the available licensed spectrum to deploy this wireless link. Besides, microwave point-to-point links produce plenty of heat while struggling to deliver capacity beyond a few Gbps. This is where free-space optics (FSO) comes into play.
FSO is a relatively straightforward technology to explain. A high-power laser source converts data into laser pulses and sends them through a lens system and into the atmosphere. The laser travels to the other side of the link and goes through a receiver lens system and a high-sensitivity photodetector converts those laser pulses back into electronic data that can be processed. In other words, instead of using an optical fiber as a medium to transmit the laser pulses, FSO uses air as a medium. The laser typically operates at an infrared wavelength of 1550nm that is safer on the eye.
FSO has often been talked about as some futuristic technology to be used in space applications, but it can be used more than that, including ground-to-ground links in access networks.FSO can deliver a wireless access solution that can be deployed quickly and with more bandwidth capacity, security features, and less power consumption than traditional point-to-point microwave links. Furthermore, since it does not use the RF spectrum, there is no need to secure spectrum licenses.
FSO struggled to break through into practical applications despite these benefits because of certain technical challenges. Communications infrastructure, therefore, focused on more stable transmission alternatives such as optical fiber and RF signals. However, research and innovation over the last few decades are removing these technical barriers. One obstacle to achieving longer distances with FSO had to do with the quality of the laser signal.
Over time, FSO developers have found a solution to this issue in adaptive optics systems. These systems compensate for distortions in the beam by using an active optical element—such as a deformable mirror or liquid crystal—that dynamically changes its structure depending on the shape of the laser beam. Dutch startup Aircision uses this kind of technology in its FSO systems to increase their tolerance to atmospheric disruptions.
Another drawback of FSO is aligning the transmitter and receiver units. Laser beams are extremely narrow, and if the beam doesn’t hit the receiver lens at just the right angle, the information may be lost. The system requires almost perfect alignment, and it must maintain this alignment even when there are small changes in the beam trajectory due to wind or atmospheric disturbances.
FSO systems can handle these alignment issues with fast steering mirror (FSM) technology. These mirrors are driven with electrical signals and are fast, compact, and accurate enough to compensate the disturbances in the beam trajectory. However, even if the system can maintain the beam trajectory and shape, atmospheric turbulence can still degrade the message and cause interference in the data. Fortunately, FSO developers also use sophisticated digital signal processing techniques (DSP) to compensate for these impairments.
These DSP techniques allow for reliable, high-capacity, quick deployments even through thick clouds and fog. FSO links can now handle Gbps capacity over several kilometers thanks to all these technological advances. For example, a collaboration between Aircision and TNO demonstrated in 2021 that their FSO systems could reliably transmit 10 Gbps over 2.5 km. Aircision’s Scientific Director John Reid explained, “it’s an important milestone to show we can outperform microwave E-band antennas and provide a realistic solution for the upcoming 5G system.”
An understated benefit of FSO is that, from a physics perspective, they are arguably the most secure form of wireless communication available today. Point-to-point microwave links transmit a far more directional beam than mobile antennas or WiFi systems, which reduces the potential for security breaches. However, even these narrower microwave beams are still spread out enough to cover a wide footprint vulnerable to eavesdropping and jamming.
At a 1km distance, the beam can spread out enough to cover roughly the length of a building, and at 5km, it could cover an entire city block. Furthermore, microwave systems have side- and back lobes radiating away from the intended direction of transmission that can be intercepted too. Finally, if an attacker is close enough to the source, even the reflected energy from buildings can be used to intercept the signal.
Laser beams in FSO are so narrow and focused that they do not have to deal with these issues. At 1km, a typical laser beam only spreads out about 2 meters, and at 5km, only about 5 meters. There are no side and back lobes to worry about and no near-zone reflections. The beam is so narrow that intercepting the transmission becomes an enormous challenge. An intruder would have to get within inches of a terminal or the line of sight, making it easier to get discovered. To complicate things further, the intruder’s terminal would also need to be very well aligned to pick up enough of a signal.
Even though fiber optical communications drove the push for smaller and more efficient optical transceivers, this progress also has a beneficial impact on FSO. As we have explained in previous articles, optical transmission systems have been miniaturized from big, expensive line cards to small, affordable pluggables the size of a large USB stick. These compact transceivers with highly integrated optics and electronics have shorter interconnections, fewer losses, and more elements per chip area. These features all led to a reduced power consumption over the last decade. At EFFECT Photonics, we achieve even further efficiency gains by an optical System-On-Chip (SoC) that integrates all photonic functions on a single chip, including lasers and amplifiers.
FSO systems can now take advantage of affordable, low-power transceivers to transmit and receive laser signals in the air. For example, a transceiver based on an optical SoC can output a higher power into the FSO system. By using this higher laser power, the FSO does not need to amplify the signal so much before transmitting it, improving its noise profile. Furthermore, this benefit happens with both direct detect and coherent transceivers. This is a key reason why Aircision has partnered up with EFFECT Photonics to create both direct detect and coherent free-space optical systems, since the startup ultimately aims to reach transmission speeds of 100 Gbps over the air.
FSO has moved from the domain of science fiction to a practical technology that now deserves a place in access networks. FSO can deliver a wireless access solution that can be deployed quickly and with more bandwidth capacity, security features, and less power consumption than traditional point-to-point microwave links. Furthermore, since it does not use the RF spectrum, it is unnecessary to secure spectrum licenses. Affordable direct detect and coherent transceivers based on SoC can further improve the quality and affordability of FSO transmission.
Tags: access networks, adaptive optics, affordable, capacity, coherent, cost-effective, deployments, free space optics, integration, license, miniaturized, photonic integration, Photonics, pluggable, power consumption, private network links, quick deployments, radio spectrum, remote communities, security, SFP, signal processing, turbulence
News
June 1, 2022
EFFECT Photonics, a leading developer of integrated coherent optics solutions, has opened its Americas Headquarters…
EFFECT Photonics, a leading developer of integrated coherent optics solutions, has opened its Americas Headquarters in Maynard, Massachusetts. The new facility provides further support for North and South American customers and partners as well as for global customers with operations in the region.
The Maynard facility expands EFFECT Photonics’ engineering, product testing and verification, customer support and marketing capacity to complement the company’s European and Asia Pacific teams. It includes engineering design space, state-of-the-art application laboratory, demo space and office space to rapidly address customer needs and the design and development of affordable, innovative photonic solutions.
“Photonics represents one of the fastest-growing industries as it provides an ideal solution to respond to the soaring demand of higher bandwidth and enable increased interconnectivity to make people’s lives better and easier,” said James Regan, CEO, EFFECT Photonics. “With the opening of our new Americas headquarters, EFFECT Photonics is well-suited to meet worldwide demand and able to realize our goal of becoming a global company.”
EFFECT Photonics aims to democratize photonics technology by making complex high-performance optical systems simpler and more affordable for a variety of industries including telecommunications, aerospace, lidar and quantum technology. With the company’s recent acquisition of ViaSat’s coherent digital signal processing business, EFFECT Photonics is the only independent supplier to that can offer the entire coherent optics stack, thereby enabling the company to provide customers with optimized designs that feature advantages in cost and power per bit. In addition, EFFECT Photonics is working on industry-leading subcomponents such as DSP, tunable lasers (iTLAs) as well as full modules for direct detect solutions. The continued growth of the company’s product portfolio and American customer base provides many career opportunities. To view current openings, please visit effectphotonics.com/careers.
“At EFFECT Photonics, we offer challenging work, great career opportunities at a fast-growing company, a welcoming culture, and the chance to work on disruptive technologies that are shaping the art of the possible in communications and beyond,” said Roberto Marcoccia, Chief Development Officer, EFFECT Photonics. “Our new regional headquarters provides an excellent work environment for our employees and offers us the opportunity to be at the heart of one of our largest markets and be closer to our customers and partners in the Americas.”
About EFFECT Photonics
EFFECT Photonics is a highly vertically integrated, independent leader in integrated optics, addressing the need for high-performance, affordable solutions driven by the ever-increasing demand for bandwidth and faster data transfer capabilities. EFFECT Photonics is headquartered in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, with additional facilities in the UK, the US and Taiwan, and a worldwide network of sales partner. www.effectphotonics.com
# # #
Press Contact:
Colleen Cronin
EFFECT Photonics
colleencronin@effectphotonics.com
Tags: America, Boston, Integrated Photonics, Massachusetts, Maynard, photonic integration, US Insights
May 25, 2022
Smaller data centers placed locally have the potential to minimize latency, overcome inconsistent connections, and…
Smaller data centers placed locally have the potential to minimize latency, overcome inconsistent connections, and store and compute data closer to the end-user. 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. Cloud-native applications are driving the construction of edge infrastructure and services. However, they cannot distribute their processing capabilities without considerable investments in real estate, infrastructure deployment, and management.
This situation leads to hyperscalers 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 too. They must manage hundreds or thousands of new nodes that will be hard to control and maintain.
At EFFECT Photonics, we believe that coherent pluggables with an optical System-on-Chip (SoC) can become vital in addressing these datacom and telecom sector needs and enabling a new generation of distributed data center architectures. Combining the optical SoCs with reconfigurable DSPs and modern network orchestration and automation software will be a key to deploying edge data centers.
Various trends are driving the rise of the edge cloud:
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 | Data center | 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 rack max |
| Outer edge | Aggrega- tion points | Town | 150 | 30 ms | 2-6 rack max | |
| Inner edge | Core | Major city | 10 | 40 ms | 10+ rack max | |
| Regional edge | Regional | Major city | 100 | 50 ms | 100+ racks | |
| Not edge | Hyperscale | State/ national | 1 | 60+ ms | 5000+ racks | |
Cisco estimates that 85 zettabytes of useful raw data were created in 2021, but only 21 zettabytes were stored and processed in data centers. Edge data centers can help close this gap. For example, industries or cities can use edge data centers to aggregate all the data from their sensors. Instead of sending all this raw sensor data to the core cloud, the edge cloud can process it locally and turn it into a handful of performance indicators. The edge cloud can then relay these indicators to the core, which requires a much lower bandwidth than sending the raw data.
Edge data centers therefore allow more sensor data to be aggregated and processed to make systems worldwide smarter and more efficient. The ultimate goal is to create entire “smart cities” that use this sensor data to benefit their inhabitants, businesses, and the environment. Everything from transport networks to water supply and lightning could be improved if we have more sensor data available in the cloud to optimize these processes. Distributing data centers is also vital for future data center architectures. While centralizing processing in hyper-scale data centers made them more energy-efficient, the power grid often limits the potential location of new hyperscale data centers. Thus, the industry may have to take a few steps back and decentralize data processing capacity to cope with the strain of data center clusters on power grids. For example, data centers can be relocated to areas where spare power capacity is available, preferably from nearby renewable energy sources. EFFECT Photonics envisions a system of datacentres with branches in different geographical areas, where data storage and processing are assigned based on local and temporal availability of renewable (wind-, solar-) energy and total energy demand in the area.
As edge data center interconnects became more common, the issue of how to interconnect them became more prominent. Direct detect technology had been the standard in the short-reach data center interconnects. However, reaching the distances greater than 50km and bandwidths over 100Gbps required for modern edge data center interconnects required external amplifiers and dispersion compensators that increased the complexity of network operations. At the same time, advances in electronic and photonic integration allowed longer reach coherent technology to be miniaturized into QSFP-DD and OSFP form factors. This progress allowed the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) to create the 400ZR and ZR+ standards for 400G DWDM pluggable modules. With small enough modules to pack a router faceplate densely, the datacom sector could profit from a 400ZR solution for high-capacity data center interconnects of up to 80km. If needed, extended reach 400ZR+ pluggables can cover several hundreds of kilometers. Cignal AI forecasts that 400ZR shipments will dominate in the edge applications, as shown in Figure 3.
Further improvements in integration can further boost the reach and efficiency of coherent transceivers. For example, by integrating all photonic functions on a single chip, including lasers and optical amplifiers, EFFECT Photonics’ optical System-On-Chip (SoC) technology can achieve higher transmit power levels and longer distances while keeping the smaller QSFP-DD form factor, power consumption, and cost.
With the rise of edge data centers, telecom providers must manage hundreds or thousands of new nodes that will be hard to control and maintain. Furthermore, providers also need a flexible network with pay-as-you-go scalability that can handle future capacity needs. Fortunately, several new technologies are enabling this scalable and automated network management.
First of all, the rise of self-tuning algorithms has made the installation of new pluggables easier than ever. They eliminate additional installation tasks such as manual tuning and record verification. They are host-agnostic, can plug into any third-party host equipment, and scale as you grow. Standardization also allows modules from different vendors to communicate with each other, avoiding compatibility issues and simplifying upgrade choices. The communication channels used for self-tuning algorithms can also be used for remote diagnostics and management, such as the case of EFFECT Photonics NarroWave technology.
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, AI in network management will become a significant factor in reducing the energy consumption of future telecom networks.
Future smart transceivers with reconfigurable digital signal processors (DSPs) can give the AI-controlled management layer even more degrees of freedom to optimize the network. These smart transceivers will relay more device information for diagnosis, and depending on the management layer instructions, they can change their coding schemes to adapt to different network requirements
Cloud-native applications require edge data centers with lower latency, and that better fit the existing power grid. However, their implementation came with the challenges of more data center interconnects and a massive increase in nodes to manage. Fortunately, coherent pluggables with self-tuning can play a vital role in addressing these datacom and telecom sector challenges and enabling a new generation of distributed data center architectures. Combining these pluggables with modern network orchestration and automation software will boost the deployment of edge data centers. EFFECT Photonics believes that with these automation technologies (self-tuning, SDNs, AI), we can reach the goal of a self-managed, zero-touch automated network that can handle the massive scale-up required for 5G networks and edge computing.
Tags: 400ZR, artificial intelligence, cloud, coherent, computing, data centers, DSP, edge, edge data centers, infrastructure, latency, network, network edge, operators, optical system-on-chip, pluggables, self-tuning, services
