At present, generation of communication technology is born, the communications industry is developing faster and faster. What is the trend of the next five years?
First, the emerging edge of the silicon photon technology
As the optical and electrical use of discrete methods, photon and electronic technology to follow their own development path, the current optical communication system in power consumption, cost, integration encountered bottlenecks.
Silicon photonics utilizes CMOS microelectronics to achieve integrated fabrication of photonic devices that combine the ultra-large-scale logic of CMOS technology with ultra-high-precision manufacturing and the advantages of ultra-high-rate, ultra-low power for photonic technology. Is a kind of disruptive technology that can solve the contradiction between long technological evolution and cost.
At present a number of silicon photon key technology has been a breakthrough, is expected to begin commercial in three years.
Second, with the cloud, large data technology integration, optical communication SDN into the 2.0 era
SDN is recognized as the development trend of optical communication, through the introduction of control and forwarding separation of the open architecture, can significantly enhance the network capabilities, and has begun to gradually deploy online. However, with the gradual deployment of SDN and the continuous increase in network traffic, SDN controller / application deployment flexibility, data storage, processing power, security and network stability under high traffic will be a huge challenge.
In the next 3-5 years, SDN technology will enter the 2.0 era, SDN open network architecture and cloud, large data technology, cloud deployment of control and application, with large data technology analysis and forecast traffic will become SDN2.0 Key features. Through the introduction of the above technology, SDN solution can achieve the safe and flexible deployment, to ensure SDN data storage, data processing requirements, and multi-dimensional prediction of network traffic trends, thereby further enhancing the network of intelligence and agility, Environment to ensure customer experience.
Third, beyond 100G, single-channel transmission rate continues to improve
100G optical transmission is difficult to meet the future video, cloud computing, large data, things such as emerging business network bandwidth needs. Now the network upgrade 100G optical transceiver unit can be doubled to enhance the system capacity, with a high cost and feasibility.
Ultra 100G will inherit and carry forward 100G optical transmission design ideas, while maintaining the transmission distance unchanged while improving the utilization of fiber spectrum resources and spectral efficiency, the introduction of advanced modulation and coding and optoelectronic integration technology to further reduce the unit bit cost.
At present, the industry actively carry out the current network experiment, promote the 100G commercial process, is expected to be the first in the data center to start the application.
Fourth, high-speed access, multi-dimensional reuse and coherent technology to show their talents
New applications of the Internet, the need for greater bandwidth to support the growth of the data needs of large enterprises, high-end community users will need to exclusive wavelength home, as well as part of the scene there will be long-distance high-bandwidth low latency access needs.
The multiplexing dimensions in optical communication technology include time division, wave division, frequency division, code division, module division and so on. Currently 40GPON is the use of time division and wave division two-dimensional reuse, which is one of the 100GPON viable way. The industry will explore the combination of the above more dimensions to provide users with greater bandwidth. In addition, the use of coherent receiver at the receiving end, can be carried in a fiber more than 1000 wavelengths, each wavelength 1G / 10G, passive transmission distance of 100km, to achieve T-bit access. To provide users with greater bandwidth, lower latency access services for operators to provide efficient and low operation and maintenance costs of the network.
40GTWDM-PON will start a commercial trip in five years, more maintenance and related technology is also a research hotspot.
Fifth, simplify, IP and optical network depth integration to enhance the large capacity routing
The current communication network adopts the multi-layer multi-domain network bearer service, and the equipment has a wide variety of equipment. The packet processing capability of the massive data is improved exponentially. At the same time, the capacity of the large-capacity routing and computing is getting higher and higher requirements, resulting in the room space is tense and the energy consumption is high ,low efficiency. The integration of IP and optical networks is one of the effective ways to solve the problem.
IP and optical network integration can be achieved through unified switching kernel technology, with group / ODUk / VC centralized switching function, thereby reducing the network level, saving network investment, reduce maintenance costs, to achieve network node intensive. By improving the capability of single-slot line card forwarding and multi-block cluster technology, you can greatly enhance single-node forwarding capability. Through multi-core processor, distributed software architecture, modular management and other technologies, you can realize multi-level routing table management.
Covering the backbone, convergence and access network IP and optical integration, with tens of millions of routing entries of the large-capacity routers, to provide full-network end-to-end solutions, operators have launched a pilot.
Six, flexible optical switching, based on CDC-F characteristics of optical cross to build the next generation of optical networks
With the deployment of 100G technology, the development of ultra-100G technology, WDM / OTN system to enhance the transmission capacity faster, optical layer of flexible scheduling and efficient processing has become an important demand for optical network nodes.
With the further improvement of the integration of WSS optical modules, the optical cross-network technology with CDC-F (Colorless, Directionless, Contentionless, FlexGrid) technology, which is constructed by WSS optical module, has the advantages of large-scale switching capacity , Wavelength and business flexibility scheduling, low power consumption, low latency and other key features, easy to build flexible and efficient optical network.
With the CDC-F characteristics of the optical cross-technology more and more attention by the global operators, operators have been the first to deploy, is expected to start a larger range of pilot and commercial.
Seven, open to create value, optical communication network APP technology popular
Traditional optical networks are relatively closed and lack the ability to provide network management and control to external users. With the cloud computing, large data, data centers and other rapid development of the management, control the demand for optical networks more and more intense.
In the era of SDN, operators and equipment manufacturers pioneered the development of their own APP or SDK for external users to develop APP. These APP and SDK use SDN controller's open northbound interface to manage and control optical networks, Business creation, business QoS adjustment, network planning, network optimization and other functions, so as to innovate business model, simplify network applications, improve network efficiency and operation and maintenance efficiency.
In recent years, part of the friendly and interactive optical network APP has won the favor of users, the future open SDN optical network will nurture more valuable APP.
Eight, efficient and low-cost, short-range metro high-speed direct transmission direct inspection technology
In order to meet the backbone network thousands of kilometers long distance transmission requirements, the current mainstream transmission technology is coherent transmission technology. But in the city between the network, often the transmission distance of 300 km or less. In this case, how to avoid the use of coherent detection (complex system, high cost), to achieve a good transmission and networking results, is now a hot topic.
In order to achieve short-range transmission, the current main technology to consider the direct modulation, direct detection. Modulation, can be used in many ways, including: PAM-4 transmission, DMT transmission, single sideband transmission, and so on. On the receiving side, a non-coherent manner is used, using fewer optoelectronic devices. To achieve the simplification of the system and reduce the cost of the effect.
In recent years, a number of straight-line direct inspection technology experiments continue, through the gradual study and continuous optimization, the next three years will begin the pilot.
Nine, to the all-optical network, from the chip, between the board to the room between the optical interconnect technology
With the rapid development of large data and cloud technology, short chip chip and chip, long between the cabinets and data centers between the large-scale data exchange processing, are eager to high-speed, stable and reliable interconnection, conventional cable connections will not be able to deal with The
It now appears that inter-chip and inter-chip solutions can use silicon-based optoelectronic integration to effectively achieve optical interconnection. Interconnection between inter-machine, inter-rack, inter-chassis interconnection, inter-disk interconnection can use photoelectric conversion and optical transmission technology to replace the traditional cable, the main solutions include silicon-based optoelectronic integration, high-speed VCSEL and direct DFB. Among them, silicon-based optoelectronic integration scheme has the advantages of CMOS process compatibility, high integration and low cost.
The next few years, optical interconnect technology will be in the chip, between chips, between the board, cabinets, machine room between the popular application.
Ten, green communication, optical communication technology forever theme
As people's information consumption continues to increase, the need for optical communication provides more and more bandwidth, more and more energy consumption. In the increasingly tense energy today, how to achieve green communication has become one of the main direction of industry efforts.
In order to achieve green communication, some new technologies are being or will be gradually adopted, such as new energy, highly integrated chips, high efficiency power modules, smart fans, liquid cooling, intelligent flow aggregation, hardware hibernation, new materials and other technologies.