NTT Electronics, Acacia Communications verify coherent ASIC interoperability

NTT Electronics (NEL), which has dominated the market for coherent digital signal processors (DSPs) for companies that can’t make them themselves, and coherent transmission module vendor Acacia Communications, which does have such expertise, say they have verified an interoperability mode of operation between their next-generation ASICs.

“Carriers and service providers require cost-effective pluggable transceivers even beyond the Ethernet reach (~ 30 km) where de-facto 10GBASE-ZR is being used today,” said Haruhiko Ichino, NEL vice president and general manager of electronics device and systems. “The similar interoperability mode of operation at 100 Gbps, by using the established modulation format DP-QPSK and the standard forward error correction GFEC, is indispensable for emerging digital coherent technologies to penetrate new markets including shorter-reach pluggable applications.”

“The successful interoperability of the two market-leading coherent digital signal processing ASICs provides optimal flexibility to service providers as they expand their networks,” added Acacia Co-Founder and Director of DSP & Optics Christian Rasmussen. “NEL and Acacia have both independently established significant market momentum in the fast-growing long-haul coherent 100G market. Service providers and equipment suppliers have encouraged Acacia and NEL to work in closer collaboration to drive standards and increase the level of interoperability. Acacia is delighted to have worked with NEL to collaborate in this groundbreaking effort to meet customers’ 100G product expectations.”

Carrier spokespeople concurred. “100G coherent application is to be extended from purely long-haul to metro to even short-reach applications, where the pluggable optical transceiver is attracting solution for those new applications,” said a representative of Deutsche Telekom AG (DTAG) via a joint NEL/Acacia press release. “Because pluggable modules should be freely replaceable, DTAG, as a carrier, is actively proposing to standardization bodies interoperable 100G coherent optics together with major worldwide system vendors. This announcement by NEL and Acacia does match our requirement, and we strongly support this activity. Continuously DTAG will propose standardization of the simple and mature modulation format (such as QPSK-base), and enhanced forward error correction (EFEC) for this interoperability.”

“Optical technology solutions like 100G are helping us continue to evolve and scale our network to support the next generation of high bandwidth services in an efficient and cost effective way,” added Shamim Akhtar, distinguished architect at Comcast. “100G multivendor line-side interoperability is important because it pushes vendors to be innovative and lets us use the optical and fiber infrastructure we’ve already built to flexibly and cost-effectively install much more networking capacity.”

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