OIF Looks at Long Reach

FREMONT, Calif. -- The Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) announced today that the Physical & Link Layer Working Group (PLL WG) has initiated technical work on Electronic Dispersion Compensation (EDC) and an extension to the OIF Serdes Framer Interface (SFI-5) Implementation Agreement. The EDC initiative is aimed at long reach (LR)(80 km) and very long reach (VR)(120 km) 10 Gb/s optical transceivers and transponders. The SFI-5 effort, dubbed SFI-5 Phase 2, will change the OC-768 interface from the current 16-lane to a new four-lane interface based on the 11 Gigabit Short Reach Common Electrical Interface (CEI).

"The industry believes that EDC will soon achieve milestones for performance, power consumption and economics that can make EDC a viable wide-spread technology solution for the 10 Gb/s market," said Steve Joiner of Bookham Technologies, OIF Technical Committee chair. "This OIF project targets the use of EDC to stretch the link distance for long reach applications. An example would be to take a link that is normally limited to 80 km and with EDC technology, extend it to 120 km with minimal or no additional expense to the system user."

The PLL WG is reviewing the current state of 10 Gb/s EDC technology and evaluating the modeled and measured performance of the components. This effort will facilitate the maturation of EDC technology appropriate for 10 Gb/s LR and VR fiber optic links. The OIF's intent is to recommend the parameters and specification methodology necessary for industry interoperability and standardization.

SFI-5 Phase 2 will define the data path between 40 Gb/s optical modules, SONET/SDH framers and Forward Error Correction (FEC) components. Next generation equipment platforms will need higher density and a reduced CAPEX for optical modules for OC-768 ports. This project will further the integration, density and expense reduction of 40 Gb/s line cards.

"The SFI interfaces developed by the OIF are generally accepted in the industry as the required interface to optical modules," said Mike Lerer of Xilinx, OIF PLL WG chair. "The natural progression of technology justifies the move from the current 16-lane interface to a four-lane interface to enable the development of smaller form factor and more cost-effective 40-gigabit optical modules."

New Chairs Elected
At its July quarterly meeting, the OIF announced that Jim Jones of Alcatel was elected as the Forum's new Technical Committee chair, Trey Malpass of Mindspeed was elected as the new Technical Committee vice-chair and Rama Ati of Cisco Systems was elected as Market Awareness & Education (MA&E) Committee co-chair. The election results are effective October 1, 2004. Prior to the last quarterly meeting, Karl Gass of Sandia National Laboratories was elected to serve as the Physical Layer User Group chair.

Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF)