Abstract

Over the last several years, fiber optic transmissions in metro/regional/enterprise core rings have seen significant economical advantages to increase per-channel data rates from 2.5Gb/s to 10Gb/s. Three important industry standards converge at a data rate of approximately 10Gb/s [1], i.e., OC192/STM-64 9.95Gb/s and ITU-T G.709 10.7Gb/s; 10 Gigabit Ethernet 10.3Gb/s; and 10 Gigabit Fibre Channel 10.5Gb/s. To address these close-to-end-user markets requires aggressive cost-sensitive solutions, pushing even more the targets of the cost goal of 2.5x cost as at lower rates for 4x increase in per-line rate. The 10Gb/s optical interface can normally take several forms, e.g.; a line card, a transceiver, or a transponder. Its cost reduction path took advantages of the idea of pluggable optics, as a result of Multi-Source Agreements (MSAs) that defines common form factors and electrical interfaces. The first 10Gb/s module was 300-pin MSA in 2000, followed by XENPAK, XPAK/X2, and most recently XFP, each supporting different protocols, fiber reaches and power dissipation levels. As the underlying technologies mature toward volume manufacturing, the module cost and power dissipation have been dramatically reduced.

© 2005 Optical Society of America