NeoPhotonics Products to Support 400G Coherent Transport
NeoPhotonics, a US designer and manufacturer of hybrid photonic integrated circuit (PIC)-based modules and subsystems for communications networks, has announced a range of products to support 400G and beyond optical transport including long haul, metro and datacentre interconnects (DCI).
The range includes high speed InP based waveguide photodetectors for coherent receivers with higher baud rate transmission, ultra-narrow linewidth lasers for higher order constallations such as 16QAM and 64QAM, dual output lasers for dual carrier architectures, and small form factor coherent components for high density line cards and pluggable coherent optics.
These products will be on display at the European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC) in Valencia, Spain from September 28 to 30 (stand 500 in the Feria Valencia Convention and Exhibition Centre).
NeoPhotonics 400G range addresses each of the approaches for increasing transport bandwidth. Conceptually, the most straight forward path to increasing the bandwidth is to increase the symbol rate by increasing the raw speed of the optical system. NeoPhotonics InP based high speed waveguide photo-detectors can be incorporated in both monolithic and hybrid integrated coherent receivers and are capable of supporting symbol rates of 64 Gbaud, which is twice the standard 32 Gbaud in current 100G systems.
Higher baud rate transmission is best suited to Long Haul applications where higher data rates can be achieved without compromising system reach. The ICRs are configured in compact small form factor packages and, when coupled with NeoPhotonics Dual micro-ITLA, efficiently support dual carrier 400G implementations. The Dual micro-ITLA provides two independent, ultra-narrow linewidth, separately tunable, lasers in a form factor 25 percent smaller than separate micro-ITLAs and is well suited to dense linecards with either 400G or multiple 100G ports.
A second approach to increasing transport bandwidth is to use higher order modulation techniques to increase the number of bits per symbol. Thus using 16QAM doubles the number of bits transported compared to standard QPSK implementations, even though the underlying baud rate is unchanged, and 64QAM quadruples the data rate. Higher order modulation is often used for Metro and DCI, since the same optical components can support double or quadruple the data rate, although over a shorter reach.
However, such higher order modulation schemes are more sensitive to both amplitude and phase noise since the separation between states is necessarily reduced, and therefore require the most stable, ultra-narrow linewidth laser sources. Inherent to their design, External cavity lasers have the narrowest linewidth in the industry, and the NeoPhotonics micro-ITLA exhibits typical linewidths of 20 kHz, resulting in high fidelity in higher order modulation. These lasers are available in single and dual micro-ITLA configurations and, when coupled with compact NeoPhotonics micro-ICRs, enable high density line card and pluggable module implementations.
"Just as our hybrid photonic integration technology is a mainstay in 100G coherent transport implementations, we are pleased to see our products and technologies enabling our customers as they move to 400G systems," said Tim Jenks, chairman and CEO of NeoPhotonics. "Moving from 100G to 400G coherent transport systems requires increased performance coupled with smaller size and lower power, which clearly demonstrates the power of our hybrid photonic integration," continued Mr. Jenks.
Separately, for 400G datacentre and client applications, NeoPhotonics is presenting its very high bandwidth electro-absorptive modulated laser (EML) generating superior performance in use with High Order Modulation (HOM) systems. A joint demo with Inphi Corporation in Inphi's stand 400 will demonstrate a full dual lambda 100G PAM4 solution based on Inphi's PAM4 PHY IC and NeoPhotonics EML based Q-TOSA.
NeoPhotonics also will exhibit at ECOC its suite of standard and small form factor PIC-based components and its modular Multi-Cast Switches, both for 100G and 400G coherent line-side applications, along with its 100G client-side CFP2 and CFP4 transceivers and its next generation transceivers for access networks.
