ClariPhy and Sumitomo Electric demo world's first 100G coherent CFP technology

OFC 2013, USA: ClariPhy Communications Inc., a leading developer of ultra-high speed systems-on-chips (SoCs) for coherent optical networks, and Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd., a leading global provider of advanced optical solutions, announced a demonstration of the world's first 100 gigabit per second (100G) coherent CFP technology platform.

The demonstration highlights significant breakthroughs in power and size reduction for 100G coherent transmission, with ClariPhy showing the industry's first 28nm CMOS analog to digital converter (ADC) and
digital to analog converter (DAC) suitable for 100G and 200G coherent transmission, and Sumitomo Electric showing an indium phosphide (InP) based integrated coherent optical engine.

The demonstration comprises real-time transmission as well as capture and detection of coherent signals in both QPSK and 16QAM modulation formats. The combined solution also provides a roadmap to next generation coherent interfaces in CFP2 and smaller form factors.

100G coherent technology is being rapidly adopted by carriers for long-haul dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) networks because of its tremendous advantages in spectral efficiency and reach compared to the previous generation of 10G (non-coherent) systems.

However, the high cost, power consumption and size of today's 100G coherent solutions make them unsuitable for use in shorter reach metro networks and inter-datacenter links, where cheap, pluggable 10G DWDM solutions such as XFP and SFP+ dominate. As 10G metro networks become overwhelmed by a surge in bandwidth demand, carriers are calling for a 100G metro solution with the benefits of coherent (high fiber capacity, dispersion tolerance and ROADM compatibility), but in a pluggable form factor at a cost and power per bit that is comparable with or better than 10G.

Pluggability also allows reuse of line cards with 100G client CFP interfaces for DWDM transmission and enables operators to scale their metro transport networks to 100G and beyond with "pay as you grow" flexibility. The technology demonstrated by ClariPhy and Sumitomo Electric enables a 100G coherent interface within the 32W budget specified by the CFP multisource agreement (MSA).