ANTONY SAVVAS 400G TESTING
TEST AND MEASUREMENT INDUSTRY DRIVERS According to progressive testing company Anritsu, the four key trends that are currently driving the communications sector, and the requirements for test and measurement equipment are as follow: ● Higher speed, smaller size and lower power consumption are key drivers for the optical interfaces of leaf and spine switches on high-end servers and storage devices; ● Enhancements for high-speed inter-equipment interfaces, including advanced semiconductor devices, network interface cards and optical modules for 25GbE, 50GbE, 100GbE, 200GbE and 400GbE; ● The PCIe Gen4 (16GT/s) standard for bus/backplane interfaces in network interface cards, which has just been ratified. High speed serial bus transmission must keep pace in the evolution to higher speeds to allow data centre server cards to keep supporting the high speed interconnects migration towards 400G and beyond; and ● PAM4 (pulse amplitude modulation) transmission, now becoming widely adopted to increase bandwidth in 50G/200G/400GbE systems, and likely to migrate into next-generation solutions for other standard interfaces such as Infiniband, Thunderbolt and PCIe Gen5 in the near future
insight and FEC-aware applications, coupled with scalability and throughput needed to meet the upcoming demand.” The VIAVI Multiple Application Platform (MAP-200) is an optical test and measurement platform optimised for cost-e ective development and manufacturing of optical transmission network elements. Based on the previous-generation Multiple Application Platform (MAP), the MAP-200 is optimised for test applications in lab and manufacturing environments ranging from insertion loss testing to dispersion penalty testing. Available modules include broadband source, EDFA, Fabry-Perot laser, LED source and polarisation controller, for instance. MORE INTEGRATION Alessandro Messina, EMEA wireline business marketing senior manager at Anritsu, says that as both network equipment manufacturers and the semiconductor industries are becoming focused on the integration of high- speed Ethernet and high-speed serial bus connectivity on the same boards and chipsets, they require signal integrity analysis and standard compliancy validation capabilities for all the related technologies. Messina says: “From a test and measurement perspective, the key focus today is on signal-integrity evaluation for R&D on PAM4 systems channels simultaneously.” And this with additional test functions in areas such as PAM emphasis, signal equalisation, interference and noise stress generation and jitter tolerance verification, says Messina. Anritsu recently launched the Signal Quality Analyser MP1900A BERT, an all-in-one, high-performance bit error rate tester that can accurately evaluate high-speed interface designs during the early development stage. It can measure the performance of network-side interfaces at speeds of 400GbE, 200GbE and 100GbE, as well as internal PCI Express, Thunderbolt and USB bus interfaces, to help speed up design evaluation times and lower the overall cost of testing. in the semiconductor and optical module industries, along with the capability to test multiple signal
iOptics is an intelligent pluggable optics test application covering SFP, SFP+, XFP, CFP, CFP2, CFP4, QSFP+ and QSFP28. EXFO’s LTB-8 is a customisable test system that can be used from R&D through to production covering physical and transport layers up to 100G – with what the company describes as the industry’s best port density and which is ready for 400G. ECOSYSTEM New network speeds rely on a complete ecosystem, from discrete photonics like laser and photo-diode assembles, ICs and connectors carefully integrated into optic modules, to network elements pulling together complex ICs, power supplies and cooling. Paul Brooks, product marketing manager at VIAVI, says: “As products move from the early R&D lab, through software and product validation into production and then into the field, R&D need to meet di erent requirements at each stage.” In the early R&D stages, Brooks says, test equipment needs to show the performance of the individual elements like the ROSA, TOSA and ICs meet performance expectations. “400G is a particularly demanding step for the ecosystem,” says Brooks. “Previous steps have built upon each other using maturing technology, especially around NRZ signalling both optically and electrically. As 400G moves to PAM-4 signalling, tighter margins coupled with links protected by FEC technology, means a major change in the way high- speed Ethernet components - from ICs to optical modules - are tested and validated.” The use of FEC “really complicates things”, he says. Real insight is needed to see if the background error flow will cause uncorrectable errors. “Significant new ‘FEC aware’ applications are needed at all stages of testing and measurement – R&D, software and validation, production and in the field. “This is further complicated by the speed at which 400G is moving. It will be necessary to scale the production volumes of modules very quickly. This means more complex testing in less time than the current legacy tests.” Brooks stresses: “400G-ready test and measurement solutions must o er
Anritsu's Signal Quality Analyser MP1900A BERT
Exfo’s FTBx-88400NGE Power Blazer
Viavi’s 400G ONT-600 tester
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ISSUE 11 | Q4 2017
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