Avanex's Barbarossa touts return to technological innovation

MARCH 21, 2007 By Stephen Hardy -- After a period in which component and subsystem suppliers focused on squeezing cost out of their existing product lines, Avanex (search for Avanex) CTO Giovanni Barbarossa says that visitors at next week's OFC/NFOEC will see a new generation of system building blocks that leverage technological innovation to address emerging carrier requirements for efficiency, intelligence, and flexibility.

The cost-cutting measures of the post-bubble era have been well documented; staff reductions and the shifting of manufacturing and, in some cases, engineering to lower-cost facilities in Asia come immediately to mind. "But fundamentally there wasn't really a change in the products," Barbarossa says. "There was maybe a change in labor rates, and the supply chain was pushing to get the same parts from low-cost suppliers, typically overseas. But fundamentally there was no real change in the product functionalities -- it was the same stuff, just lower price."

However, carriers -- and therefore the systems houses that supply them -- have begun to turn their attention to reducing operational expenses. "The recent emphasis is more on dollars spent per bit transmitted -- or maybe another way to say it is the cost of ownership of the network is actually where the focus is. So that doesn't necessarily mean lower-cost components," Barbarossa asserts. "From my perspective, it's more about new components that provide the network operators lower capex and lower opex opportunities to manage their networks."

Barbarossa believes such requirements put the emphasis back on new technology, particularly work in material sciences, physics, electronics, software, architecture, and product design. Advances in these areas will not only make new network features technologically feasible but affordable as well.

"We've said that we're going to announce at OFC a low-cost ROADM function," Barbarossa says by way of example. "And the low cost is not coming from an overseas manufacturing [strategy]; it's really coming from the architectural solution and from IP we own."

Products that add flexibility to the network, particularly ROADMs and tunable lasers, have received significant attention. But agility is not the only opex advantage the new generation of components and subsystems can provide. Barbarossa points to extended reach as another example of innovation meeting emerging carrier requirements.

"Tunable dispersion compensation is definitely going to be a hot area. I think the optical solutions will start to grow in volume in deployment. And the cost point will get to the point that electronics [-based alternatives] will really be challenged," he points out.

"I really think low-cost monitoring is going to be very key," Barbarossa adds. "Most of the available optical performance solutions out there are really not addressing signal-to-noise ratio. And so having a low-cost, signal-to-noise-ratio monitor is very important. And there is a combination there between the actual physics of the tunable filter and the algorithms implemented at the firmware level. So that's where a lot of work is being done today to provide a low-cost and reliable solution for monitoring."

Barbarossa also cites the drive toward higher speeds, whether 40 or 100 Gbits/sec, as an area where technology will have to step up. Again, engineers will have to address both technical and economic feasibility. "If you look at DQPSK, for example, there are still challenges on both the transmission and the receiver side to make the transmission gear cost-effective," he offers.

The potential to address carrier requirements in the optical domain remain great, Barbarossa believes. "Optical technology is just in its infancy, and has a long way to go before it runs out of steam in terms of improving the efficiency of the network," he concludes.