In a week of bold optical transport announcements, Huawei announces a 200G PIC for metro networks.

June 27, 2014

2 Min Read
Huawei Ups the Metro Ante

Huawei has ended a week of increasingly bold optical development announcements by unveiling a 200Gbit/s photonic integrated chip (PIC)-based device designed for deployment in metro networks. (See Huawei Unveils 200Gbit/s Metro Photonic Integration Device.)

The Chinese vendor believes that capacity demands on metro networks will increase dramatically, driven by increasing volumes of backbone traffic being offloaded onto metro networks. As a result, metro transport gear needs to have much greater capacity and this, believes Huawei, makes the introduction of high-capacity WDM systems at "the edge" of the network inevitable.

To meet that demand, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. has developed a PIC -- a chip that integrates multiple WDM components such as lasers, modulators, detectors, and multiplexers -- that can deliver 200 Gbit/s per fiber and be deployed on its OSN 1800 V box, a 5RU height WDM/OTN box. (See Huawei Unveils Metro OTN Box.)

The vendor says it's also developing a 400Gbit/s PIC.

In its efforts to take a slice of a PIC market dominated by Infinera Corp. (Nasdaq: INFN), Huawei has been building up its PIC capabilities for years, and has made a couple of strategic acquisitions in Europe to boost its R&D capabilities. (See Huawei Completes CIP Acquisition, Huawei completes acquisition of Caliopa, and Infinera Shifts Up a Gear.)

And there seems little doubt that the metro network is the next big battleground for the optical transport vendors. (See Ekinops Entices 100G Metro Market, MRV Unveils OptiPacket for Metro Edge, OTN Innovation Boosts Metro 100G, Ciena Stirs Up the Metro Market, and ADVA Claims Metro 100G Security First .)

The 200Gbit/s PIC wasn't the only optical transport announcement this week, and indeed not the only one from Huawei. Here's the pick of the rest:

— Ray Le Maistre, Circle me on Google+ Follow me on TwitterVisit my LinkedIn profile, Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading

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