7 February 2011

Nokia Siemens joins EC’s GALACTICO 100GbE transponder project

Nokia Siemens Networks of Espoo, Finland has joined the European Commission’s GALACTICO project to develop compact, cost-efficient, silicon-based photonic circuits for Gigabit Ethernet (GbE), focused on coherent optical communication systems.

The three-year research program (launched last October) aims to uniquely blend three of the most established integration materials — indium phosphide (InP), gallium arsenide (GaAs), and silicon (Si) — on a common silicon-based platform to address the high-performance, volume production and low-cost requirements of the next generation of GbE, and eventually Terabit, optical transponders. The total budget of the project is €4.02m, with €2.9m of that coming from the European Commission (EC) via its Seventh Framework Program (FP7), Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).

Along with Nokia Siemens Networks, the eight other partners of the GALACTICO consortium — comprising university research centers and companies from several European countries — are: IHP GmbH (Germany); Constelex Ltd (Greece); Telecom Italia S.P.A (Italy); U2T Photonics UK Ltd (UK); U2T Photonics AG (Germany); Technische Universität Berlin (Germany); Institute of Communication and Computer Systems, National Technical University of Athens (Greece); and Universidad Politecnica de Valencia (Spain).

“Currently system vendors require their own photonic integration technology to deliver a practical and economically feasible 100GbE system solution,” says GALACTICO project coordinator Lars Zimmermann. “Our project aims to develop low-cost and small-size 100GbE interfaces, and provide integrated coherent transmitters and receivers that deliver a massive amount of aggregate bandwidth,” he adds.

“We have been at the forefront of the transition from 10 and 40Gbps networks to 100G and beyond,” says Uwe Fischer, head of optical networks product management at Nokia Siemens Networks. “With our expertise in the optical transport domain, we will provide specifications for the components to be developed as well as participate in the ensuing lab demos and field trials,” he adds.

Tags: Nokia Siemens 100GbE transponder

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