Fujitsu Upgrades ROADM’s 40G Interface

Fujitsu Network Communications Inc. announced Monday the general availability of second-generation 40G interfaces for its FLASHWAVE 7500 ROADM. Fujitsu said the interfaces are shipping now to two unnamed carrier customers.

The release is an improvement on the 40G support first announced in summer 2007.

Three new 40G units are now available. The 40G Transponder is primarily intended for 40Gbps core router interconnection services and provides a full-band tunable network interface and an OC-768 client interface. The 4:1 Muxponder provides an efficient method for aggregating 10G traffic and quadrupling the capacity of existing 10G-based networks. The 40G Regenerator provides electrical signal regeneration for long spans, eliminating the cost and complexity involved with the use of back-to-back transponders.

The primary upgrades include a reduction size, now taking up two slots instead of four, said Randy Eisenach, market development director for Fujitsu Network Communications. In addition, it supports longer reach – up to 900km depending on the fiber type whereas the first generation supported 500 to 600km.

In addition, he said, the price point has come down from about $115,000 to the $58,000-$70,000 range.

The solution still takes advantage of Adaptive Differential Phase Shift Keying (ADPSK) modulation and Fujitsu’s patented Variable Dispersion Compensation (VDC) to enable network growth up to 1.6Tbps of capacity.

Eisenach explained that the VDC technology enables each wavelength to be tuned individually. Tuning all the waves at once works well at 10Gpbs, but not at 40Gbps, he said, explaining the need for a different method. Essentially, the VDC device permits 40Gbps transmission over wavelengths originally designed to have a maximum speed of 10Gbps, so service providers can increase the capacity of existing wavelengths.

Until 40 gigabit Ethernet client side interfaces are standardized, which is expected next summer, there will be greater demand for the 4:1 muxponder, which uses four 10gigE client-side interfaces, Eisenach predicted.

“40Gbps is one of the highest Optical Networking (ON) growth areas as consumer demand, driven by video, is stressing network capacities,” said Ron Kline, research director of network infrastructure at Ovum. “The 40Gbps market will grow nearly 90 percent in 2009 as a new generation of integrated muxponders becomes available and 4x10Gbps applications dominate deployments.”

Most 40G deployments presently are in the long-haul and regional networks to hedge bandwidth exhaust, Eisenach said. The cost of the transponders for 40G is cheaper than new construction, he explained, noting that the cost differential between 10G and 40G has come down some from six times to around five times.

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