IPEC provides 800G short-haul interconnect specifications

The International Photonics & Electronics Committee (IPEC), an international standards organization that develops open optoelectronic standards and strategic roadmap reports, has unveiled baseline specifications for 800G DR8 and 2x400G FR4 interfaces as well as plans to release 800G DR and FR optical-layer standards in the second half of this year.

The standardization effort is being led by IPEC’s Physical Media Dependent (PMD) work group, which IPEC established at the beginning of last year to address a variety of networking scenarios, including 800G transmission over 500 m, 2 km, 10 km, and 80 km. Working group members, representing network operators and OTT service providers as well as optical module, component, and package vendors, determined that DR and FR standardization at 800G was crucial, given the IEEE 802.3 Beyond 400 Gb/s Ethernet Study Group’s report that up to 79% and 95% of network deployments span 500 m and 2 km, respectively.

With the current state of the industry supply chain in mind, the PMD working group members believe that DR8 is the best approach for 800G at reaches of approximately 500 m. DR8 uses 53-GBaud PAM4 modulation at the 1310 nm wavelength, and technology developers should be able to leverage existing 400G DR4 technology, which the working group believes will significantly reduce chip design cost. Work on 200G per channel technology offers a roadmap to 1.6T DR8, they point out. The group anticipates beginning work on specifications that leverage 200G per channel in 2023.

The figure below shows 800G DR8 optical link budget for 500-m transmission.

Meanwhile, the 2x400G FR4 also uses 53-GBaud PAM4, but at 1271 nm, 1291 nm, 1311 nm, and 1331 nm. Here too, development should be able to leverage 400G FR4 optoelectronic chip designs, with 2x800G in the cards as 200G per channel technology reaches maturity. The figure below shows optical link budget for 2x400G FR4 deployments.

Details of the baseline specifications are available from the IPEC website’s Download center. IPEC membership over the past year has grown from 13 to 30, including China Telecom, China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), Meituan, Huawei, FiberHome, Broadex, CIG Shanghai Co., Ltd., Wenzhou Yihua Connector, Fujitsu Optical Components (FOC), Hisense Broadband, HG Genuine, Source Photonics, Yamaichi, AOI, InnoLight, ZTE, AROPTICS-TECH, Mindsemi, Accelink, O-Net, H3C, YOFC, Foxconn, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Sitrus Technology, Semtech, Advanced Fiber Resources, ATOP Corporation, SiFotonics, and Intel.

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