OFC '98 Final
Reported By Kristin Lewotsky
By all accounts, OFC '98 was a raging success. The optical communications industry is booming, and this is nowhere reflected as clearly as it was at OFC '98. Attendance for the week rose to 9304, almost half again as much as last year's figure of 6646. The aisles of the exhibit hall were packed with industry professionals, particularly on Wednesday and Thursday. The postdeadline papers, along with many of the regular technical sessions, were standing room only -- it was difficult to find space for the nearly 2800 technical attendees.
Working the show, I was struck with how rapidly the technology is pulled out of the labs and converted into commercial products. It seems like only last week I was sitting in an OFC '95 meeting listening to papers on a state-of-the-art technique called wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) or on transmission at the amazingly rapid rate of 2.5 Gbit/s (ooh, ahh). At OFC '98, companies offered WDM systems with as many as 40 channels, and a host of components operating at 10 Gbit/s. With growth in bandwidth requirements continuing to outstrip even the most ambitious projections, the fiberoptic communications industry is racing to keep up. And thanks to the efforts of countless talented engineers, researchers, managers, and venture capitalists, it is succeeding.
WDM Over Plastic Fiber
Like most trade shows, OFC '98 was heavily populated with 'gee whiz' demonstrations. Among the most interesting to me was a demonstration by Asahi Glass (Tokyo, Japan) of WDM over plastic optical fiber. The system consisted of three separate video cameras linked to dedicated monitors by graded-index, perfluorinated polymer fiber. Input from the three cameras was first converted to an optical signal over three wavelength bands: 1210 to 1220 nm (l2) , 1300 to 1310 nm (l3), and 1340 to 1350 nm (l4). The l2 and l3 optical signals were multiplexed, then transmitted by fiber to a second multiplexer where they were combined with the l4 signal. The multiwavelength signal passed over approximately 150 m of optical fiber before it was demultiplexed to provide three separate video signals for the three monitors.
The system incorporated Asahi's Lucina fiber, a graded-index, perfluorinated polymer fiber with attenuation on the order of 50 dB/km for operation in the 1300 nm range. The fiber offers bandwidth of 500 MHz·km over the temperature range from -40 to 70° C. With core diameters ranging from 0.14 mm to 0.18 mm in a 0.25 mm cladding, the fiber achieves a numerical aperture of about 0.2.
The Need for Speed
With laboratory and installed systems increasingly turning to 10 Gbit/s data rates, the need has grown for high-speed equipment to test component and network performance. The BPG 40 GIG pattern generator available from SHF design Microwave Components GmbH (Berlin, Germany) is touted as being the first commercially-available 40 Gbit/s pattern generator. The high output power of the device allows engineers to use 6 dB power splitters to generate 16 channels of output at 10 Gbit/s, 16 channels at 20 Gbit/s, or 4 channels at 40 Gbit/s for simultaneous WDM testing. It can produce either pseudo-random bit sequences or a user-programmable data pattern. To complement this product, SHF plans to release a 40 Gbit/s error analyzer by the end of the year.
In other news, the Telecommunications Industry Association (Arlington, VA) turned down by a narrow margin the motion to designate the MT-RJ connector as an industry standard for data communications and premises networks. The vote returned 59 percent of the required 60 percent majority, denying the six-company development team made up of Amp (Harrisburg, PA) and Hewlett-Packard (Palo Alto, CA), Siecor Corp. (Hickory, NC), Fujikura (Japan), and USConec (City, ST) the marketing edge they would gain from having the standard designation.
Team members seemed undaunted, however. Hewlett-Packard general manager of fiber optic components Paul Engle echoed statements made in the Wednesday press conference when he said that HP would press ahead with the production of components incorporating the MT-RJ, in full expectation of market acceptance. According to Steve Joiner, principal engineer of HP's Communications Semiconductor Solutions Division, Cabletron Systems (East Rochester, NH), Cisco Systems Inc. (San Jose, CA), and XLNT Corp. (San Diego, CA) are designing the connector into current and next-generation systems.
This completes the general coverage of OFC '98. Detailed technical summaries of selected postdeadline papers and regular presentations will appear daily in the Technical News section of this site over the next week, so check in with us regularly. As for OFC, in 1999 it moves to San Diego, CA. With a lovely, warm-weather destination like that for a show held in the dead of winter, attendance is sure to crack the 10,000 mark. Driven by an industry expanding at the speed of light, it is likely to go beyond that.