Ciena integrates 40G coherent Adaptive Optical Engine into CN 4200 RS FlexSelect and CoreStream
MAY 10, 2010 By Stephen Hardy -- Continuing the integration of the assets it acquired from Nortel, Ciena Corp. (NASDAQ: CIEN) says it will soon integrate the ex-Nortel Adaptive Optical Engine and 40G coherent capabilities into the CN 4200 RS FlexSelect Advanced Services Platform and CoreStream Agility Optical Transport System. The company also plans to add 100G coherent capabilities “very quickly,” according to Tom Mock, senior vice president of strategic planning at Ciena.
Both platforms already had 40G capabilities based on optical duobinary technology supplied by Opnext, Mock says. Ciena will continue to support that technology for existing customers, but the coherent approach will become the company’s standard 40G technology going forward. The recently acquired technology pairs coherent detection with a dual-polarization quadrature phase-shift keying (DP-QPSK) modulation format.
Ciena will incorporate the 40G coherent and Adaptive Optical Engine capabilities into the CN 4200 RS via a new module. A new FlexSelect Optical Shelf will provide the coherent technology for the CoreStream. The first implementation on the CoreStream will cover only 40G. However, Mock says that 100G will follow soon, describing the addition of 100G as “only a matter of testing.”
The CN 4200’s 40G coherent upgrade, along with related network management enhancements, should become available in the second half of this year. Ciena has completed the optical integration of the 40G coherent capabilities into CoreStream, and the FlexSelect Optical Shelf began lab and field trials this month.
Mock predicts that broad deployment of 100G won’t begin until 2012 or 2013, which provides plenty of time for 40G to become more firmly established in the field. He expects there to be global demand for the new 40G coherent capabilities.
The announcement underscores Ciena’s commitment to integrating the former Nortel Metro Ethernet Network (MEN) assets quickly, Mock emphasizes. (For more on the integration plans, see the video interview with Mock on the Lightwave Channel.)
“After closing the acquisition of Nortel’s MEN assets in March, Ciena acted quickly to define its organizational structure and product portfolio, rallying around ground-breaking coherent 40G and 100G technology,” said Ron Kline, principal analyst, network infrastructure at Ovum. “Now, after a little more than a month, the company has begun making solid progress on successfully integrating that coherent technology into the CN 4200 and CoreStream platforms, which significantly widens Ciena’s addressable market to include the sizeable embedded base of its network elements.”
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