Gearing Up for OFC 2012 and Reflection on ROADM Evolution

This week’s blog post comes from Ken Falta, Senior Director of Marketing, Finisar

With OFC/NFOEC approaching next week, anticipation of the industry’s upcoming product and technology announcements invariably leads to speculation and, of course, reflection. One of the most talked-about trends at last year’s OFC was the evolution of ROADM functionality and its role in increasingly flexible and scalable networks capable of transporting network traffic at a lower cost per bit per kilometer. Of course these forecasts included disparate views not only among WSS vendors but among systems OEMs and even network operators in which the virtues of colorless, directionless, contentionless (CDC) connectivity coupled with gridless or elastic optical networks were contrasted with operational and logistical challenges of implementation into legacy networks.

As with most enabling technologies, the acceptance of these capabilities has gained momentum as challenges are seen as opportunities and addressed through entrepreneurial enterprise. Throughout 2011, we’ve seen mounting evidence of movement toward the broad adoption of elastic networks (in which the bit rate, modulation format and channel spacing are tuned according to reach and capacity requirements) from the standards committees, systems OEMs, carriers and even component vendors, where each of which were, until recently, vocal skeptics.

At the standards level, ITU has accepted the updated G.694.1 standard to include a flexible DWDM grid definition, transcending the 50/100/200 grid limitations and settling, at least for now, at 12.5 GHz channel spacing.

At the carrier level, Verizon continues to be the leading advocate for flexible spectrum functionality. Verizon’s Glenn Wellbrock was quoted in the December 2011 Gazettebyte stating, “In my opinion, the key technology enabler in 2012 will be the flexible grid optical switching that can support data rates beyond 100 Gigabit and provides the framework to support colorless, directionless and contentionless optical nodes.”

In addition to Verizon, NTT, BT and Telefonica, among other carriers, have released publications quantifying the spectral efficiencies gained through flexible grid functionality.

In one recently published paper by researcher Thierry Zami of Alcatel-Lucent at ECOC 2011, it was shown that a European Backbone Network consisting of fixed QPSK 100Gb/s connections and 50GHz channel spacing (using a network planning algorithm to establish connections up to 1% blocking), if configured with flexible channel spacing, would increase in capacity by 32.7% while only requiring a 3.6% increase in regenerators. And, if the same network employed both flexible channel spacing and flexible QPSK (or 8 QAM or 16 QAM), the same capacity would increase by 35.3% while only requiring a 2.2% increase in regenerators.

With 2011 behind us, it has become increasingly clear that WDM networks are likely to continue on this evolutionary path to scalability and flexibility through CDC connectivity and flexible grid functionality. It’s also clear that we can expect that creative initiatives designed to further the capability of optical networks will be revealed and debated at OFC 2012 followed by the continual advancement of WDM networks.

Ken Falta

OFC 2012 Preview: Visit Finisar booth #1703

We are excited to participate in the upcoming OFC/NFOEC exhibition and conference next week at the Los Angeles Convention Center. As the largest tradeshow gathering in our industry, we look forward to seeing many familiar faces as well as having the opportunity for new introductions. Be sure to add #1703 to your schedule, where we’ll be lighting up our booth with new products and technology demonstrations.

Additionally, we will have many Finisar representatives speaking at the event and hope that you are planning on attending these sessions:

• Finisar’s executive Chairman of the Board, Jerry Rawls, will join a panel of experts for the session “The (Gross) Margin Challenge” at the OSA Executive Forum.
•Steve Joiner, Director of Transceiver Development, will conduct a short course on Short-Reach Optical Interconnects.
• Steve Frisken, CTO at Finisar Australia, will present at the workshop: What is the Value of Flexible Grid Networks?
• Chris Cole, Director of Engineering, will also present a Finisar paper on the topic of ‘Next Gen CFP Modules’.

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter for regular show updates and other highlights at this year’s show.

We look forward to seeing you in Los Angeles next week!

Finisar’s Flexgrid™ on display in Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum

Finisar’s DWP range of Wavelength Selective Switches, with their unique Flexgrid™ dynamic channel bandwidth technology, form the centrepiece of a new exhibition at Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum. The exhibition, which highlights Australia’s leading engineering success stories, was opened by Brendyn Williams, Engineers Australia Sydney Division President and Matthew Connell, Principal Curator, Physical Sciences & IT, Powerhouse Museum on the February 1, 2012. The opening was attended by engineers from the Finisar Australia team that developed the Flexgrid technology, together with 150 guests. Located in the entrance area of the museum, the exhibition will run until the end of 2012. More information can be found here.


Photos: Marinco Kojdanovski
Reproduced courtesy of the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney.

A Look Back over 5 Years of WSS Evolution

It’s now just over 5 years since we started shipping our first LCoS-based Wavelength Selective Switch (WSS) to customers. At that time, the majority of shipments were for 1×4 WSS (the DWP 100) operating at 100 GHz channel spacing, with a smattering of 1×8 configurations, again operating at 100 GHz. The pace of evolution since then has been nothing short of incredible.

Firstly, there was a move to what, at the time, were high port-count devices (1×8, 1×9). As usual, this caused a number of manufacturing challenges but the robustness of the DWP platform meant that this could be achieved with minimal changes to the optical design.

Next came the introduction of Drop-and-Continue capability that allowed the broadcasting of a single signal to multiple nodes in a system. Whilst this has remained a niche capability, it has found its way into a number of systems in the metro/access space.

A much larger step was the move to 50 GHz channel spacing, again with 1×9 configurations – our DWP50 platform. At that time we started to offer WSS mixed 50/100 GHz channel plans (the precursor of Flexgrid™) based on the capabilities of the LCoS optical processor to switch between different channel types in software.

Whilst the move to high port count, 50 GHz channel spacing was happening in the core, the need for low-port-count devices re-emerged to support the network edge. To meet the demand for both high performance and small size we introduced the EWP platform in 2009, which provides 1×2 switching capability with 50 and 100 GHz channel support in a small-form-factor package.

In early 2010 we started talking about the ability to optimise channel bandwidth to better match the capacity of the signal it was carrying, from which came our Flexgrid™ product line, which was formally released at ECOC in September 2010. This allows the user to adjust the bandwidth of a channel anywhere from 37.5GHz up to 400 GHz in 12.5 GHz steps. Flexgrid has now become a key part of next generation DWDM networks and is part of the ITU G.694.1 standard and is supported on both our DWP50 and EWP50 product lines.

Watch Finisar’s Flexgrid Technology Video to learn more.

Finisar Australia Wins Prestigious Export Award

Finisar was recently recognized by the Australian Trade Commission (Austrade) and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) for outstanding export achievement by a manufacturer and received the prestigious 2011 Large Advanced Manufacturing Award. Over the past year, Finisar Australia’s exports increased 70 percent and Finisar was applauded for its global focus on key customers and ability to target products and services to the specific needs of businesses.

Together, the 75 finalist companies, including the 12 winning companies, have contributed $5.6 billion in export earnings to the Australian economy, and employed more than 10,000 people spanning across the industries of agribusiness, arts, education and training, energy, services and manufacturing.

Australia’s esteemed Trade Minister, Craig Emerson, hosted the event and acknowledged Finisar as a part of the wide array of high caliber companies that reflect the depth and diversity of the Australian economy.

Simon Poole, Director of New Business Ventures at Finisar Australia received the award and stated “We are honored to have had our efforts and successes recognized by Austrade and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. A big thank you for the acknowledgement and support!” Watch Simon Poole’s acceptance speech here.