8 March 2012

Finisar demos 28Gb/s VCSEL for next-gen32G Fibre Channel

At the Optical Fiber Communication Conference & Exposition and National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference (OFC/NFOEC 2012) in Los Angeles this week (6-8 March), fiber-optic communications component and subsystem maker Finisar Corp of Sunnyvale, CA, USA gave several technology and product demonstrations, including (1) optical backplane technology using Finisar board-mounted optics, (2) a 28Gb/s vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) for 32G Fibre Channel applications, and (3) a GPON Stick that provides complete Gigabit passive optical network (GPON) optical network terminal (ONT) functionality in a compact SFP package.

Board Mount Optical Assemblies for optical backplane applications

The Board Mount Optical Assembly (BOA) is a new transceiver form factor that fundamentally changes the way optics are deployed in network, storage and high-performance computing systems. Finisar claims that its family of BOAs provides an optical solution with the highest bandwidth and density, and lowest power available for parallel I/O across backplanes or between systems, and that it is the first to offer a family of devices with various transmitter and receiver configurations up to 24 channels of 10Gb/s in a single board-mounted package.

The demonstration, in collaboration with electro-optical circuit board supplier vario-optics AG of Heiden, Switzerland and electrical and optical connectivity component and system supplier HUBER+SUHNER AG of Pfäffikon, Switzerland, brings together key technologies required for practical optical backplane implementations. The set-up included Finisar’s BOA transceivers providing parallel transmit and receive channels at aggregate data rates of 240Gb/s, embedded optical flex circuits that enable complex and high-density routing of optical signals within the PCB from vario-optics, and robust passive optical backplane connectors from HUBER+SUHNER.

Board-mount optics are being deployed in a wide range of applications including:

• front-panel I/O in switching and routing systems: where front-panel port density exceeds that achievable with pluggable MSA transceivers;
• optical backplanes in servers, storage and switching, where data rate, power consumption or bandwidth density exceeds the capabilities of electrical interfaces; and
• high-density active optical cabling, for chassis-to-chassis interconnect of multi-lane protocols (e.g. 40/100G Ethernet, PCIe, SAS, and InfiniBand).

28Gb/s VCSEL demonstration for next-gen32G Fibre Channel

Finisar’s 32Gb/s Fibre Channel technology demonstration showed VCSEL capability up to 28.05Gb/s over multi-mode fiber (28.05Gb/s is the chosen line rate for the next-generation 32G Fibre Channel standard for storage-area networks). Continuing the focus on higher data rates for in-house VCSEL technology, Finisar says that it has demonstrated a critical building block for the next generation of several markets, addressing both increasing data rate and the need for reduced package sizes. These markets include 32G Fibre Channel, InfiniBand Extended Data Rate (EDR), 100GE and OTU4, as well as high-bandwidth optical interconnects.

GPON Stick (SFP-ONT) for FTTx and wireless backhaul

Finisar also demonstrated what is claimed to be the industry's first GPON (Gigabit passive optical network) Stick product, a GPON ONT in an MSA SFP package that is currently sampling. The GPON Stick provides a pluggable GPON interface for FTTx and wireless backhaul applications with a compact size and lower power consumption. Any standard Ethernet SFP switch port can simply convert to a GPON ONT port and interconnect to an existing GPON network with the insertion of this module. It is built in compliance with ITU-T G.984 specifications (an industry standard defining GPON access networks). The live demonstration showed high-definition video streaming over a GPON system consisting of Finisar’s GPON Stick, passive splitter and OLT transceiver products.

Introduction of passive splitters for next-gen PON

Also this week Finisar is expanding its passive product portfolio with the introduction of two new optical splitters designed for next-generation PON (NG-PON) and 10G Ethernet PON (EPON). The 1x128 and 2x64 optical power splitters (which are both sampling) divide optical signals from one or two input ports uniformly into multiple output ports. The products offer low insertion loss, high channel uniformity, and are Telcordia 1209/1221 compliant with third-party certification.

Tags: Finisar VCSEL Transceivers GPON PON

Visit: www.finisar.com