Optical

San Francisco — At last year’s OFC 2024, the next speed of optical connections (1.6T) was all talk with one exception. In a back room, Keysight demonstrated a 1.6T optical link between an arbitrary waveform generator and a bit-error-rate tester. The demonstration was a transmission of raw, unstructured bits. One thing was clear, AI was…

The Ethernet Alliance and Optical Internetworking Forum featured interoperability demonstrations at data rates up to 800 Gbps. San Francisco — With so many companies and products comprising the optical networking ecosystem, interoperability is paramount. All those semiconductors, optical modules, switches, routers, servers, test equipment, and the software that makes them function must first provide their…

Fiber is required to deliver low latency, which is crucial for a 5G fronthaul between the base station and the core network. Several fiber options can increase installation density and/or flexibility in this fronthaul. Common choices include bend-insensitive fiber (BIF), OM5 fiber, ultra-low-loss (ULL) fiber, and reduced-diameter fiber. Each offers different performance tradeoffs for specific…

EE World discussed with GlobalFoundries’ Anthony Yu trends and tradeoffs in co-packaged optics and silicon photonics resulting from the rising data demand that AI thrusts upon us. It’s coming down to speed versus reliability, at least for now.

EE World spoke with Sarah Boen, Director of Technology and ASIC Strategy at Tektronix, who spoke at a panel session on how AI and silicon photonics are changing networks and the challenges facing test engineers and reliability engineers. In OFC 2024: It’s AI or die, EE World reported on how the data generated by AI…

By Paul Momtahan, Infinera Learn about the components inside a coherent optical engine, what they do, and how they use modulation to send and receive data. Optical communications over metro, long-haul, and submarine networks once used simple direct-detect technology. That’s no longer the case. Demand for higher-speed optical connections has brought on complex modulations and…

By Steve Rumsby, Spirent Communications When is a standard not a standard? This is a technical rather than metaphysical question, though the answer has implications well beyond technology. In the communications business, waiting for a formal technical standard to publish can seem like forever. As a result, industry groups develop their own interim standards to…

The infrastructure of data communications networks needs lots of fiber, semiconductors, and network equipment to bring data to the masses. Optical data networks form the backbone of today’s communications. Data centers, which seem to dominate any discussion of digital communications, depend heavily on fiber-optic connections from a few meters to many kilometers. Getting those bits…

Today’s data rates are already too slow, and so are tomorrow’s. Expect more complaints about slow networks in 2025.

EE World interviewed John D’Ambrosia, who told a few stories from earlier times and gave a peek at what’s coming next from the IEEE 802.3 set of standards.