PETER DYKES THE YEAR AHEAD
2024: A YEAR OF GROWTH AND INNOVATION
Inevitably, with the new year rapidly approaching, it’s tempting to speculate about the direction the industry will take in 2024, so we decided to ask three experts in their fields how they thought the next 12 months would unfold.
SERGE MELLE PRODUCT MARKETING, OPTICAL NETWORKS, NOKIA. The start of 2023 was exciting for optical networking, with several vendors announcing new high-performance coherent optics able to operate at 1.2Tbps per wavelength, including Nokia’s PSE-6 super-coherent optics. Progress in product roll-outs will end the year on a high note, with multiple customers announcing real-world live network field trials of these optics. My expectation is that technology innovation and new capability announcements will continue in 2024, along three key themes; continued scaling of WDM line systems, optical network automation, and 800G pluggable coherent optics. One trend that has continued unabated year-over-year is exponential growth in network traffic, on the order of 30-40% per year, with new tailwinds coming from the growth of data-intensive AI/ML traffic. An ever-increasing number of optical network operators are now seeking to grow network capacity over their existing fibre plants and defer costly and time- consuming fibre overbuilds. For 2024, one can expect more deployments of WDM line systems that operate over the C and L bands of the optical fibre spectrum, termed C+L line systems. There will be an increasing range of C+L line system options, including modular C+L that allows gradual in-service expansion to the L-band when needed, and integrated C+L systems that deploy both bands on day 1.
One can expect to see an increased adoption of optical network automation software, that leverages AI and machine learning to automate complex and/or repetitive tasks in areas such as network planning and optimization, analytics and trouble-shooting, and service provisioning. Finally, following on the success of 400Gbps pluggable coherent optics such as 400ZR, ZR+, and CFP2, we will see several vendors introduce 800G pluggable coherent optics to bring increased network scale to metro and edge/access applications. Expect to see 800G pluggable optics supporting several standards or interoperability agreements, such as 800ZR, 800ZR+, and 800G OpenROADM, in a variety of form factors including QSFP-DD800, OSFP, and CFP2. ROB SHORE, SVP MARKETING, INFINERA 2024 promises to be an interesting year for optical networking. The industry should be past the post pandemic recovery including having most of the supply chain and subsequent backlog buildups behind us. As such, network operators can truly get back to looking forward, growing their networks and planning for future evolutions. One of the big trends you are likely to see in 2024 is the 400G pluggable revolution finally ramping up in network applications. To date, 400G pluggables deployments have been dominated by low output power (-10dBm) ZR and ZR+
technology and have been deployed largely in simple direct fibre DCI networks for hyperscalers. Traditional network operators have been slower to adopt 400G pluggables as their networks require a higher performance pluggable including 0dBm launch power and incremental operational features such as direct management, out-of-band noise suppression, and a higher OSNR. These network-grade pluggables (sometimes referred to as ZR++) started to become available in 2023 and will likely see a significant uptick in deployments in 2024 in service provider networks. Another significant trend in 2024 is a shift in direction for increasing fibre capacity. Historically, network operators could expect a 20-30% improvement in spectral efficiency with each new generation of coherent optical engine. However, with the 6th generation coherent technology (such as Infinera’s ICE6), the industry has drawn close enough to Shannon’s limit such that successive generations will provide only modest (~10%) incremental gains. As such, network operators will begin exploring alternative ways to increase the amount data that can be carried by each of their fibres. The most straightforward solution is to increase the amount of usable spectrum. Some equipment providers have answered this call with solutions that expand the usable spectrum from the extended C-band (4.8Thz) to the Super C-band (6.1Thz). This technology provides nearly 30% increase in fibre capacity. With the latest generation of transponder technology and in conjunction with
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INDUSTRY FOCUS 2023/2024
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