Telecom & Infrastructure

THE NETWORK EFFECT ACROSS BANDWIDTH AND INFRASTRUCTURE

TOWARDS THE INTERNET OF (ALMOST) EVERYTHING The telecommunications sector has historically experienced multiple revolutions as new means of communications were developed. However, in the past 20 years, this trend has further accelerated with the development of internet and wireless systems, further putting pressure on telecom networks. From voice and text data, telecom infrastructures have now switched to IP data, resulting in an explosion of the traffic resulting from the increased number of connected systems – smartphones, tablets, wearables – and the Internet of Things (IoT) trend. In the future, the development of 5G, as well as cloud-based applications, will require the telecom infrastructure to continue to innovate – and that’s not mentioning 6G development. Semiconductors continue to play a huge part in telecom technologies, weaving together the global telecom network that keeps people connected.

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5G: THE NEXT BIG OPPORTUNITY FOR SEMICONDUCTORS

The wide adoption of semiconductor devices in telecommunications that started in the 1950s has enabled significant advances in technology, leading to the democratization of telecom services. Consequently, there has been an enormous increase in network traffic growth, across all network architectures, from long haul mobile access to inter and intra-datacenter networks. Mobile bandwidth requirements have moved from voice calls and texting to ultra-high-definition video and a variety of new applications, such as cloud gaming, virtual and augmented reality, and machine-to-machine communication. The coming 5G revolution was necessary to implement in order to provide higher bandwidth and wider broadband access.

Overall, from fiber-optic communication to servers, storage and site/antenna, telecom systems have to integrate new semiconductor technologies to keep up with new types of bandwidth demand. Those developments are mostly oriented toward power electronics, photonics, RF, memory and computing devices, alongside the deployment of 5G technology.

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A MATTER OF OPTICS, PHOTONICS, RADIOFREQUENCY AND COMPUTING

The telecom sector must adapt to meet global trends related to the exponential growth in data consumption. At the same time, it must keep an eye on expanding machine-to-machine applications, higher bandwidth needs, speed and low latency requirements, energy efficiency, cost savings (through deep optics) and electronics integration, combined with ASIC and Digital Signal Processing (DSP).

The disaggregation of datacenters can also be key to increased flexibility and lower maintenance. Pooling computing, memory and storage elements into specific locations allows for changes to be implemented easily without impacting other parts of the datacenters.

All those trends make it so that the telecom sector will have to leverage emerging semiconductor technologies. These technologies have the potential to revolutionize customer experience, network expansion and infrastructure management.

An example of future innovations can be found in the integration of photonic integrated circuits (PICs), also known as silicon photonics technology. Integrating complex electro-optical circuits onto a single silicon chip enables the creation of new form factors while increasing bandwidth and distance. This significantly improves power efficiency and density in ways that simply could never be addressed with discrete devices.

Our Vision

WITH EVERY FIBER OF OUR BROADBAND BEING

At Yole Group, we consider two main market segments: data communications and telecommunications (communication over a distance).

The definition of telecommunications is growing to encompass long distance communication by different means – optical, wire or radio. “Data communication” specifically refers to digital interconnection within a data center using mostly fiber optics as a communication channel.

This segmentation forms the basis for the industrial infrastructure value chain and technology classification. The value chain of both sectors consists of datacom and telecom (cloud and voice) service operators, equipment suppliers, module suppliers and component/material system designers and manufacturers.

Analysts at Yole Group follow optical, photonics, RF and computing technologies from wafer level all the way to the packaged modules and sub-systems used in both datacom and telecom end-systems. From long-haul networks to the “last mile,” we monitor the impact of global network IP traffic growth on fiber-optic communication systems, servers and storage systems, as well as RF.

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HELPING YOU FIND THE SWEET SPOT IN YOUR NETWORK

At Yole Group, we identify, analyze and understand where radiofrequency communication technologies are headed, in parallel with their optical and photonics counterparts.

We monitor related end-systems, devices and materials with a strong focus on:

  • antenna systems and radio heads
  • RF chain, servers (CPU, GPU, ASIC)
  • storage (NAND, DRAM memory)
  • optical transceivers (VCSEL and EEL-based)
  • silicon photonics platforms
  • InP/GaAs wafers

We can also inform you of the implications of storage and processing for the telecom and infrastructure industry.

In parallel, Yole Group has developed significant expertise focused on RF technologies for smartphone applications. We dive deep into actual smartphones to identify the technical choices made by leading OEMs and evaluate the related costs and market shares. For each smartphone, we deliver valuable production forecasts per segment, including Wi-Fi air standard, MIMO order, and band support. We point out overall markets at RF board-level for several components: Wi-Fi connectivity, cellular RF front end, 5G mmWave, geolocation, cellular SoC and RF transceiver.