Deutsche Telekom tests Acacia Communications’ CFP2-DCO coherent optical transceiver

Coherent technology specialist Acacia Communications, says that its CFP2-DCO coherent optical transceiver has passed interoperability tests with Deutsche Telekom. The German incumbent examined how well the optical module worked with what Acacia termed “Tier 1 switch and router platforms.” Acacia did not further identify the platform suppliers.

The tests, which Acacia said were part of technology qualifications ahead of Deutsche Telekom’s upcoming metro core and long-haul technology deployments, saw the CFP2-DCO support 100-Gbps transmission over reaches of more than 1500 km while demonstrating interoperability within multiple switch and router platforms from multiple vendors.

“Interoperability gives us the freedom to choose the best router fit for each particular application,” explained Axel Clauberg, vice president, Aggregation, Transport, IP (TI-ATI) & Infrastructure Cloud Architecture at Deutsche Telekom AG. “We believe that Acacia’s CFP2-DCO coherent module will help to enable the transformation of the telco industry toward a modern IP and cloud-based production, and significantly reduce production costs through the use of open source and open hardware. We can now use this technology to interconnect with external networks like peering partners at 100G.”

“Standard-based interoperability at the optical transport layer where 100G coherent DWDM transceivers reside is relatively new,” added Fenghai Liu, associate vice president, product line management at Acacia Communications. “However, we are increasingly seeing this as the preferred solution and minimum requirement from network operators. Deutsche Telekom’s successful interoperability testing of Acacia’s CFP2-DCO pluggable module over a 1,500 km long-haul distance demonstrates its interoperability capabilities with other platforms to facilitate network simplicity and optimization.”

Acacia began sampling the CFP2-DCO module – which differs from the CFP2-ACO in that the coherent DSP resides within the optical transceiver – in late 2016 (see “Acacia Communications samples CFP2-DCO with internal coherent DSP”). The device reached general availability approximately a year later (see “Acacia Communications coherent CFP2-DCO transceiver reaches general availability”). The Acacia transceiver remains the only CFP2-DCO to progress that far. To accommodate customers who would prefer two CFP2-DCO suppliers, Acacia set up Oclaro as a second source with an agreement to supply the necessary coherent DSP (see “Acacia, Oclaro join for CFP2-DCO optical transceivers”). Oclaro demonstrated its version of the optical transceiver at ECOC 2018 in Rome; it expects to have its CFP2-DCO in production early next year (see “Oclaro privately demos CFP2-DCO optical transceiver at ECOC”).

Source: https://www.lightwaveonline.com/