The Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) has started work on two optical interface projects that the organization says will help the component and hardware industry segments decrease module sizes.
The two projects are IC-TROSA and C form-factor pluggable (CFP2)-Digital Coherent Optics (DCO).
IC-TROSA would enable manufacturers to have a higher level of integration for transmit and receive optical components, while the CFP2-Digital Coherent Optics (DCO) project will work with other standards bodies to implement coherent modulations formats in CFP modules.
Addressing emerging data center interconnect, metro and long-haul applications, the Integrated Coherent Transmitter-Receiver Optical Subassembly (IC-TROSA) project combines Polarization Multiplexed Quadrature (PMQ) Transmitter (Tx) and Integrated Coherent Receiver (ICR) components to create a single integrated optics package.
As module sizes decrease, current coherent optics components will require similar size reductions to enable next generation multi-terabit switches, line cards, and transport. Likewise, density requirements for next-gen line cards, front-pluggable and future on-board 400G+ optical modules are driving the need for further integration and miniaturization.
With the CFP2-DCO project, the OIF will address the management interface and identify registers necessary to talk to the digital signal processor (DSP) located in the module, specific to coherent modulation techniques. The CFP2-DCO is intended to be used for 100G, 200G or 400G applications for metro, long-haul and data center interconnections and it can support different formats such as DP-QPSK and DP-xQAM.
The OIF’s projects come at a time when service providers are deploying more WDM to address higher speeds and metro network transitions.
According to a recent Dell’Oro Group report, WDM shipments are transitioning from 100 Gbps to 200 and 400 Gbps and are expected to grow at a five-year compound annual growth rate “surpassing 100 percent.” New metro deployments will be driven by the need to upgrade higher wavelength speeds such as 200 Gbps, replacing legacy systems to accommodate higher speed wireline broadband, and interconnecting enterprise data centers.
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