Oclaro shows off coherent CFP2 at 200 Gbps

With an eye towards a wider range of applications, Oclaro, Inc. (NASDAQ: OCLR) is demonstrating the coherent CFP2 optical transceiver it introduced at OFC this past March at a data rate of 200 Gbps. The company has paired its optical module with the LightSpeed-II CL20010 DSP chip from ClariPhy Communications to achieve the 200 Gbps (see "ClariPhy 200G coherent DSP chip reaches production").

The company has been shipping examples of the analog coherent CFP2 to customers since this past May. According to Oclaro COO Adam Carter, these are alpha versions. Beta versions should be available by the end of the year, and production quantities should start to roll out in the latter half of 2015 (listen to "Oclaro details 100G transceiver advances" for more details). The module dissipates 12 W and should find use in at both 100 Gbps (using DP-QPSK) and 200 Gbps, with the latter possibly including combining a pair of 200 Gbps modules to create 400 Gbps line cards. Company sources suggest that using 16-QAM they should able to support reaches of 100 km and beyond, which would meet customer requests. To support 200G, the module is designed to produce an output power of 0 dBm with 16-QAM.

"CFP2-ACO technology is the most important catalyst for cutting the cost of coherent equipment and accelerating the rollout of 100G metro networks," said Andrew Schmitt, Principal Analyst, Carrier Transport Networking for Infonetics Research, via an Oclaro press release. "Oclaro took a leadership role in developing a coherent CFP2-ACO transceiver, and our aggressive 2016 forecast is based on the wide availability of this technology."

For more information on optical transceivers and suppliers, visit the Lightwave Buyer’s Guide.