Technology

Dutch start-up Effect Photonics says it is sampling its first products, a family of DWDM transceivers based on its low-cost optical ‘system-on-chip’ technology.

This technology integrates all the active and passive components of a DWDM transceiver within a single chip, without the traditional gold box packaging. 

Keysight Technologies has developed new technology that will enable the company to deliver real-time and equivalent-time oscilloscopes with bandwidths greater than 100GHz.

The new ‘scopes are aimed at engineers working with next-generation, high-speed interfaces, such as the upcoming IEEE P802.3bs 400G, as well as terabit coherent optical modulation, who will need to measure high-speed electrical parameters. These technologies will also play a key role in validating fifth-generation (5G) wireless designs.

BT has used G.fast technology to deliver a cloud radio access network (C–RAN) cellular network service over copper. The UK operator partnered with US-based semiconductor manufacturer Cavium for the trial, which took places at BT Labs at Adastral Park in Ipswich.

Nokia has completed a laboratory trial with Deutsche Telekom to demonstrate how service providers can use XG-FAST to deliver high-speed broadband over their existing copper networks.

The lab trial was conducted at the end of 2015 by Alcatel-Lucent before its acquisition by Nokia.

The members of the microQSFP (micro quad small form-factor pluggable) multi-source agreement group have released draft mechanical specifications for the new microQSFP module and cage.

The draft mechanical details will allow system designers, optical module makers and copper cable assembly providers across the industry to begin the process of developing next-generation hardware based on the microQSFP definition.

Optical transport specialist Infinera says its next generation of coherent technology will allow operators to extract the maximum capacity and reach out of installed terrestrial and submarine networks.

Several new technologies have been grouped into what Infinera calls the ‘Advanced Coherent Toolkit’ (ACT), which will be offered commercially sometime later in the year.

The new technologies have also been “tested to their limits” on a challenging 9,000km fibre-optic link – one of the world’s longest – belonging to the Australian carrier Telstra.

Engineers at the University of California, Berkeley have fabricated a microprocessor with integrated photonic interconnects, a first according to the researchers. The 3 x 6mm chip contains two processor cores with 70 million transistors and 850 photonic components.

The microprocessor was fabricated with mass production equipment, showing it can be scaled up easily. The research was described in a paper published in Nature.

Researchers at Bell Labs, the research arm of Alcatel-Lucent, have created a prototype technology – a 6x6 real-time multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) optical transmission system – that could make petabit optical systems a reality one day.

Researchers from Japan and the US have achieved a new record for high-capacity transmission over a single optical fibre.

Using a homogeneous 22-core singlemode multi-core fibre from Sumitomo Electric Industries, Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) transmitted 2.15Pb/s, which represents an advance over the previous record by more than a factor of two.

Several demonstrations at the ECOC 2015 Exhibition in Valencia, Spain, this week, indicate that test and measurement vendors are putting significant effort into testing of single-carrier 400Gb/s transmission. And where the test and measurement vendors go, the rest of the industry is sure to follow.

Anritsu, Coherent Solutions, Oclaro and Teledyne LeCroy have come together to develop the industry’s first commercially available R&D platform for testing single-carrier coherent optical communication systems and components operating at 56Gbaud and beyond.