News: Optoelectronics
28 September 2023
Coherent and Kinetic extend partnership to enable 100G services at network edge
Materials, networking and laser technology firm Coherent Corp of Saxonburg, PA, USA and Kinetic by Windstream, a business unit of communications and software company Windstream that provides fiber-based connectivity, collaboration and security services across 18 states in the USA, have their existing partnership to enable 400G services has been extended to enable 100G services at the edge of the network, leveraging what is claimed to be the industry’s first 100G QSFP28 0dBm digital coherent optics (DCO) transceiver.
The rapid growth of data traffic driven by enterprise and cloud networks, including the exponential growth of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) applications, is driving demand for next-generation transmission technology that enables service providers to efficiently expand the capacity of the transport network, note the firms. With the new high-power 100G transceivers from Coherent, Kinetic will be able to optically connect routers directly to access, metro and regional transport networks without additional intermediary interfaces, eliminating an entire layer of optical equipment.
“The 100G QSFP28 DCO transceiver with 0dBm output power is the industry’s first, and it enables Kinetic to deploy 100Gbps coherent transceiver technology in the access aggregation networks efficiently and sustainably,” says Matthias Berger, VP, coherent technology, at Coherent. “These benefits are achieved thanks to the transceiver’s unique features, including Coherent’s Steelerton digital signal processor (DSP) optimized for 100G, cost-efficient silicon photonics technology, high-power indium phosphide (InP) tunable lasers, and Flextune technology,” he adds.
“We are pleased to expand our partnership with Coherent, which has been vital in accelerating the scale of our network in a sustainable way as we continue to deliver on our commitment to bring fiber connectivity to businesses and homes across rural America,” says Kinetic’s chief technology officer Jeff Austin. “Coherent’s high-transmit-power 0dBm 100G QSFP28 DCO transceivers will add to the existing 0dBm 400G QSFP-DD DCO transceivers to enable Kinetic to deploy greatly simplified network architectures,” he adds. “This will further accelerate the revolution in IP-over-DWDM networks to achieve efficiency and scale across our 18-state network, affording Kinetic a highly competitive operational model.”
Kinetic validated the new 100G transceiver technology through a live network trial consisting of 820km transmission over 14 cascaded ROADM nodes. The live trial was achieved over a production link at 75% channel capacity carrying a mix of 10G, 100G and 400G signals from multiple technology generations. The 100G transceivers operated flawlessly end-to-end over the network, exceeding optical performance requirements and validating the IEEE electrical interface standard.
Coherent is demonstrating the 100G QSFP28 0dBm transceiver in stand #406 at European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC 2023) in Glasgow, Scotland, UK (2–4 October). At the conference, Coherent is showcasing the most recent additions to its portfolio of differentiated solutions for telecom and datacom optical networks.
