Acacia Team Hits the Road: Next Stop – Shenzhen, China!
By Lisa Crewe | Posted on September 5, 2018
Acacia To Present on 5G Optical Networking at the China International Optoelectronic Conference
It’s wheels up again for the Acacia team! This time, Fenghai Liu is headed to Shenzhen, China to present at the 20th annual China International Optoelectronic Exposition (CIOE), the world’s largest exhibition in the optoelectronic industry, which takes place September 5 – 7, 2018. He was invited by China Mobile to participate in the China Mobile – 5G Optical Network Development Summit on September 6th.
At the conference, Fenghai is leading a discussion on Coherent Optical Modules in the 5G Era. His presentation will be first in the afternoon session on September 6, 1:30 p.m. – 5 p.m. CST (China Standard Time). He is Acacia’s Associate Vice President of Product Line Management & System Quality Assurance and has worked in optical transport systems and optical transceivers development for more than 25 years. His experience allows him to bring a unique perspective to what is needed for coherent solutions to thrive in 5G.
Over the last 10 years, coherent optical modules have been used widely in submarine, long-haul and metro networks, in part to the application of digital signal processing (DSP) and photonic integrated circuits (PIC). User expectations from mobile networks continue to escalate as wireless carriers prepare for 5G networking, which promises five times the bandwidth of today’s 4G networks. Liu is addressing the important role coherent optical modules can play in 5G transport networks as well as the new requirements and challenges in access, aggregation and core layers.
Coherent offers several benefits in these access aggregation applications compared to traditional direct detect solutions. At higher data rates, it becomes very challenging to deploy direct detect solutions over 10’s of km’s without using dispersion compensation. Alternatively, solutions may consider many parallel optical interfaces, but that drives up the cost of the solution.
Figure. 5G Backhaul network.
Today’s coherent implementations are generally based on tunable laser technology. While fixed laser implementations are a consideration in these applications, tunable solutions can offer operational benefits by significantly reducing the number of spares that need to be stocked. Tunable solutions also tend to support shorter lead times, accelerating the ability to turn up new services. Lastly, coherent solutions are future proof with the ability to scale capacity by increasing data rate or adding additional wavelengths
Adoption of coherent technology in access networks could offer an additional benefit that may not be obvious at first. Since the same solutions can address a wide range of network interfaces (e.g., access aggregation, metro, and regional), it may be possible to collapse the supply chain for multiple applications into a single solution. This could offer significant operational efficiencies for network operators.
If you’d like to meet with Fenghai at CIOC or learn more about the role of coherent modules in 5G networks, please contact us
See you in Shenzhen!