The 800G Pluggable Multisource Agreement (MSA), which was established in 2019 and consists of more than 40 member companies, announces the demonstration of the industry’s first 800G-LR4 transceiver prototype with up to 10 km reach based on 200Gbps-per-wavelength PAM4 and wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technologies. The transceiver is aimed for applications in hyperscale data centers and telecommunication networks, enabling low-latency, low-cost and low-power-consumption interconnection within 10km duplex-fiber links.

The transceiver prototype incorporates high-speed optical/electrical chips, devices and system technologies from several MSA member companies. On the transmitter side, the transmitter optical subassembly (TOSA) consists of four 112GBaud PAM4 ultra-high speed driver and Electro-absorption Modulated Laser (EML) chips with a LAN-WDM4 grid, low-loss package interconnect design and a WDM multiplexer. On the receiver side, the cost-effective receiver optical subassembly (ROSA) consists of 112GBaud PIN and 112GBaud TIA. With enhanced equalization algorithms, the measured receiver sensitivity is better than -8dBm OMA @4.85E-3 at the PD input before fiber coupling. Another scheme of receiver with semiconductor optical amplifier is also under investigation. It is aimed to deal with special user cases with higher channel loss.

Figure 1:

Figure: The 800G-LR4 transceiver prototype and demonstration system.

In addition, fiber transmission penalties such as chromatic dispersion (CD) and four-wave mixing (FWM) penalties have been assessed in the 800G-LR4 demo. Based on the prototype, the measured CD penalties are smaller than 1.5dB within the dispersion range of LWDM grid. In real application cases, the FWM-induced outage probability is reasonably low. By a low-cost design of polarization controlling for the four output signals, the FWM penalties further become negligible within the operating range of the signal launch power per wavelength. Overall, the link budget for 800G-LR4 has been shown to be sufficient for practical applications.

Figure 2:

Figure: The BER performance of the 800G-LR4 transceiver (Left), 800G-LR4 CD penalties assessed by simulation and experiment (Right).

The 800G Pluggable MSA will hold a live demo of the 800G-LR4 prototype at CIOE 2022 (The 24th China International Optoelectronic Exposition), from December 7-9 at Shenzhen World Exhibition and Convention Center, the booth number is #12A75.

About 800G Pluggable MSA:
The 800G Pluggable MSA group mainly focuses on the next-generation data center network interconnection scenario since establishment. From 2022, the MSA started 800G 10km project discussion, targeting to define a cost-effective 800G 10km optical interconnection solution and interface specifications. For more information, please visit URL

This content is sponsored by Huawei.