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March 15, 2023

Coherent Optics In Space

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.

It’s all About SWaP

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.

Figure 1: The cost of a kilogram of payload into space since 2000. Source: Visual Capitalist (data from the Center for Strategic and International Studies)

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.

Using Optics and Photonics to Minimize SWaP Requirements

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.

Leveraging Electronics Ecosystems for Space Certification and Standardization

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

Table 1. Temperature Extremes by Mission Type. Source: NASA

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.

Takeaways

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

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February 16, 2023

What DSPs Does the Network Edge Need?

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.

The Power Requirements of the Network Edge

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.

Co-Designing and Adjusting for Power Efficiency

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.

Modulation: 400ZR transceivers use a more power-hungry 16QAM modulation. This modulation scheme uses sixteen different states that arise from combining four different intensity levels and four phases of light. The new generation of 100ZR transceivers might use some variant of a QPSK modulation, which only uses four states from four different phases of light.
Forward Error Correction (FEC): DSPs in 400ZR transceivers use a more advanced concatenated FEC (CFEC) code, which combines inner and outer FEC codes to enhance the performance compared to a standard FEC code. The new 100ZR transceivers might use a more basic FEC type like GFEC. This is one of the earliest optical FEC algorithms and was adopted as part of the ITU G.709 specification.
Co-Designing DSP and Optical Engine: As we explained in a previous article about fit-for-platform DSPs, a transceiver optical engine designed on the indium phosphide platform could be designed to run at a voltage compatible with the DSP’s signal output. This way, the optimized DSP could drive the PIC directly without needing a separate analog driver, doing away with a significant power conversion overhead compared to a silicon photonics setup, as shown in the figure below.

Figure 2: Comparison between the drive power and power consumption of three different PIC + DSP pairings: standard DSP with a silicon PIC, standard DSP with an InP PIC, and an optimized DSP with an InP.

Industrial Hardening for DSPs

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.

Industrial Hardening: Coherent Goes Outdoors — Making an I-temp transceiver means that every internal component—lasers, optical engine, DSP—must also be I-temp compliant. Thus, it’s essential to specifically design DSPs that can reliably work within the I-temp range.

Takeaways

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

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December 14, 2022

Fit for Platform DSPs

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.

A Jack of All Trades but a Master of None

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.

Co-Designing with Indium Phosphide PICs for Power Efficiency

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.

Figure 2: Simplified diagram of the building blocks of a coherent transceiver in which the DSP drives the optical engine directly from its digital-to-analog converter (DAC). This setup can minimize the power conversion overhead of optical transceivers.

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.

Figure 3: Comparison between the drive power and power consumption of three different PIC + DSP pairings: standard DSP with a silicon PIC, standard DSP with an InP PIC, and an optimized DSP with an InP.

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.

Taking Advantage of Active Components in the InP Platform

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.

Takeaways

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

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December 7, 2022

The Power of Integrated Photonic LIDAR

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.

Figure 1: Diagram of a time-of-flight LIDAR system

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.

Figure 2: LiDAR sensors and camera on roof of a self-driving car.

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.

Replacing Bulk LIDAR with “LIDAR on Chip”

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.

Figure 2 Diagram of an optical phased array on a chip

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.”

Economics of Scale in LIDAR Systems

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.

Figure 3: Modelling of photonic integrated chip (PIC) cost as a function of aggregate number of PICs produced per year. Exponential increases in production lead to an exponential decrease in cost. Source: Model and graph provided by Prof. Meint Smit, TU Eindhoven.

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.

Using Proven Photonics Technologies for Automotive Standards

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)
Temperature Standard	Min	Max
Commercial (C-temp)	0	70
Extended (E-temp)	-20	85
Industrial (I-temp)	-40	85
Automotive / Full Military	-40	125

Table 1: Comparing the temperature ranges of different temperature hardening standards, including industrial and automotive/full military applications

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.

Takeaways

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

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November 24, 2022

What’s an ITLA and Why Do I Need One?

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.

When Do I Need an ITLA?

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).

Figure 1: Example of using an external laser (left) with other photonic components in comparison to using an integrated laser (right)

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.

What is an ITLA?

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.

Figure 2: Evolution of tunable laser form factors for coherent optics (2011-2021). Figure inspired from a picture in Laser Focus World.

The Exploding Market for ITLAs

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.

Figure 3: Global Market sales for high-performance modulators and receivers and tunable lasers. (Historical Data and Forecast). Source: LightCounting Market Forecast Report (April 2021)

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.

Takeaways

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.

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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

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November 9, 2022

The Light Path to a Coherent Cloud Edge

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.

Graph-100G-ports — Figure 1: Forecast of 100G port equivalents shipped for edge applications. These shipments are overwhelmingly 400ZR standard technology. Source: Cignal AI Transport Applications Report Q42021.

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.

The Promise of Multi-Laser Arrays

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:

Four modules of 400G: This solution uses existing off-the-shelf modules but has the largest footprint. It requires four slots in the router faceplate and an external multiplexer to merge these into a single 1.6T channel.
One module of 1.6T: This solution will not require the external multiplexer and occupies just one plug slot on the router faceplate. However, making a single-channel 1.6T device has the highest complexity and cost.
One module with four internal channels of 400G: A module with an array of four lasers (and thus four different 400G channels) will only require one plug slot on the faceplate while avoiding the complexity and cost of the single-channel 1.6T approach.

Table-comparison-module — Table 2: Comparison of different ways to implement a 1.6 Terabit/s link: four modules of 400G, a single-channel 1.6T module, and a module with four channels of 400G.

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.

Co-designing DSP and Optical Engine for Efficiency and Performance

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.

Figure-dac grey blocks — Figure 3: Simplified diagram of the building blocks of a coherent transceiver in which the DSP drives the optical engine directly from its digital-to-analog converter (DAC). This setup can minimize the power conversion overhead of optical transceivers.

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.

Graph-DSP-power — Figure 4: Comparison between the drive power and power consumption of three different PIC + DSP pairings: standard DSP with a silicon PIC, standard DSP with an InP PIC, and an optimized DSP with an InP.

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.

Driving Scale Through Existing Electronic Ecosystems

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.

Takeaways

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

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

Insights

September 29, 2022

The Future of Coherent DSP Design: Interview with Russell Fuerst

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Takeaways

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

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

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

Coherent technology can give free-space optical systems greater reach and capacity, enabling these new applications in space and terrestrial links.

Insights

June 2, 2022

Free Space Optics for Access Networks

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.

Figure 1: Free space optical system diagram

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.

Overcoming the challenges of alignment, and atmospheric turbulence

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.

Figure 2: How an adaptive optical system works.

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 alternative for safe, private networks

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.

Figure 3: Geometry of an FSO system vs. a microwave link. The microwave link has a much wider spread than FSO, which makes eavesdropping and jamming easier.

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.

Using Highly-Integrated Transceivers in Free Space Optics

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.

Figure 4: Diagram of an FSO system connected to an EFFECT Photonics 10G SFP+ pluggable transceiver via optical fiber.

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.

Takeaways

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

Insights

May 4, 2022

The Growing Market for Tunable Lasers

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 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 finally enabled the widespread implementation of IP over DWDM solutions.

Self-tuning algorithms have also made DWDM solutions more widespread by simplifying their installation and maintenance. Hence, many application cases—metro transport, data center interconnects, and even future access networks—are moving towards coherent tunable pluggables. The market for coherent tunable transceivers will explode in the coming years, with LightCounting estimating that annual sales will double by 2026. Telecom carriers and especially data center providers will drive the market demand, upgrading their optical networks with 400G, 600G, and 800G pluggable transceiver modules that will become the new industry standards.

Figure 1: Market forecast for coherent DWDM modules by data rate. Source: LightCounting Market Forecast Report (April 2021)

Same Laser Performance, Smaller Package

As the industry moves towards packing more and more transceivers on a single router faceplate, tunable lasers need to maintain performance and power while moving to smaller footprints and lower power consumption and cost. Due to the faceplate density requirements for data center applications, transceiver power consumption is arguably the most critical factor in this use case.

In fact, power consumption is the main obstacle preventing pluggables from becoming a viable solution for a future upgrade to Terabit speeds. Since lasers are the second biggest power consumers in the transceiver module, laser manufacturers faced a paradoxical task. They must manufacture laser units that are small and energy-efficient enough to fit QSFP-DD and OSFP pluggable form factors while maintaining the laser performance. Fortunately, these ambitious spec targets 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 has 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.

Figure 2: Evolution of tunable laser form factors for coherent optics (2011-2021). Figure from Laser Focus World.

Versatile Laser Developers for Different Use Cases

The different telecom and datacom applications will have different requirements for their tunable lasers. Premium coherent systems used for submarine and ultra-long-haul require best-in-class lasers with the highest power output and purity. On the other hand, metro transport and data center interconnect applications do not need the highest possible laser quality, but they need small devices with lower power consumption to fit router faceplates. Meanwhile, the access network space looks for lower-cost components that are also temperature hardened.

Table 1: Summary of different use cases for high-performance tunable lasers.

These varied use cases provide laser developers with ample opportunities and market niches to provide fit-for-purpose solutions for. For example, a laser module can be set to run at a higher voltage to provide higher output power and reach for premium long-haul applications. On the other hand, tuning the laser to a lower voltage would enable a more energy-efficient operation that could serve more lenient, shorter-reach use cases (links < 250km), such as data center interconnects.

An Independent Player in Times of Consolidation

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 forecasts show that while this consolidation will decrease the sales of modulator and receiver components, the demand for tunable lasers will continue to grow. The forecast expects the tunable laser market for the transceiver to reach a size of $400M in 2026.

Figure 3: Global Market sales for high-performance modulators and receivers as well as tunable lasers. (Historical Data and Forecast). Source: LightCounting Market Forecast Report (April 2021)

We can dive deeper into the data to find the forces that drive the steady growth of the laser market. As shown in Figure 4, the next five years will likely see explosive growth in the demand for high-purity, high-power lasers. The forecast predicts that the shipments of such laser units will increase from roughly half a million in 2022 to 1.4 million in 2026 due to the growth of 400G and 800G transceiver upgrades. However, the industry consolidation will make it harder for component and equipment manufacturers to source lasers from independent vendors for their transceivers.

Figure 4: Units sold in the global market for Tunable Lasers components: legacy, high-purity low-power, and high-purity high-power (Historical Data and Forecast). Source: LightCounting Market Forecast Report (April 2021)

This data indicates that 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 coherent transceiver solution but also the nano-ITLA units needed by other vendors.

Takeaways

The world is moving towards tunability. As telecom and datacom industries seek to expand their network capacity without increasing their fiber infrastructure, the sales tunable transceivers will explode in the coming years. These transceivers need tunable lasers with smaller sizes and lower power consumption than ever. Fortunately, the advances in photonic integration are managing to fulfill these laser requirements, leading to the new nano-ITLA module standards. However, even though component and equipment vendors need these tunable lasers for their next-gen transceivers, the industry consolidation can affect their supply. This situation presents an opportunity for new independent vendors to supply nano-ITLA units to this growing market.

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Tags: acquisition, coherent, coherent communication systems, coherent optical module vendor, coherent technology stack, datacenters, datacom, DWDM, high-performance, hyperscalers, independent, Integrated Photonics, lasers, noise, OEM, optical engine, optical transceivers, performance, photonic integration, Photonics, pluggables, power consumption, reach, self-tuning, Telecom, telecom carriers, Transceivers, tunable, tunable laser, tuneability, VARs, versatile

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