Sep 20 2016
Lumentum Holdings Inc. and Finisar® are showcasing the industry's first interoperability demonstration of 100G SWDM4 optical transceivers at the European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC) in Dusseldorf, Germany, from September 19-21.
The demonstration is scheduled to take place on the exhibit floor of ECOC 2016 where a live data link will be set up to run between the Lumentum and Finisar booths. The two module manufacturers will be exchanging data generated by local sources through their respective SWDM4 optical transceivers. They will be linked via a traditional duplex MMF link thus demonstrating the transceivers' ability to communicate with each other. The QSFP28 modules will be plugged into test systems provided by Anritsu Company and Viavi Solutions.
Using shortwave wavelength division multiplexing (SWDM), a novel technology in short reach data communications, multiple data streams from lasers emitting different wavelengths in the 850 nm band are optically multiplexed into a single fiber at the transmitter and de-multiplexed at the receiver into the original data streams. This provides a direct, low-cost solution for 100G data rate upgrades for data center customers who have an installed base of duplex multimode fiber (MMF) running at 10G today. Before SWDM, the standard upgrade path was to switch to multimode ribbon fiber and use 100G SR4 over four parallel data streams.
"SWDM is expected to play an important part in the migration from a 10G-centric data center to an architecture based on 40, 100, or 200G," said James Wynia, director of product management at Dell EMC Networking. "We are pleased to see multiple vendors embrace a common interface because of the security of supply it provides to end customers."
Lumentum and Finisar use a common set of transceiver optical specifications in order to provide interoperability of their respective transceivers. This benefits customers by presenting two well known optical module suppliers with this key technology for the most economical 100 Gbps upgrade path.
"This demonstration marks an important step in the development of a low-cost 100G solution for a great many customers who have made the investment over the years in a duplex multimode fiber infrastructure for their data centers," said Kevin Redner, product line manager at Lumentum. "We knew the technology existed to use SWDM for 100G short reach applications and today we're pleased to show that customers can move confidently forward knowing that they have multiple sources for this product."
"SWDM technology enables data center operators to extract ongoing value from their legacy duplex multimode fiber plant," added Tony Abdilla, senior product line manager at Finisar. "Duplex multimode fiber was widely deployed for 10G data transmission. With SWDM transceivers, the same fiber can be used to carry 100G data."
In 2015 the SWDM Alliance (www.swdm.org) was created with the express purpose of promoting this technology in response to a need in the industry. With SWDM4, an optical transceiver with a standard QSFP28/CAUI-4 electrical interface can be plugged into an Ethernet switch or NIC and drive 100 Gbps over legacy duplex MMF.
Source: https://www.lumentum.com/