A growing number of functional optical components tunability, optoelectronic integrated circuits (OEICs), analog and digital signal processing, and rate/protocol agile transceivers will be necessary to support optical communications over the next decade.
That is the prediction from the Optoelectronics Industry Development Association (OIDA) in Washington, which released a report on the optical communications marketplace through 2015.
Over the next decade, optical components will shrink in size, cost, and power to enable high-performance optical networks. To do this, optoelectronic research needs to grow from current levels to support the infrastructure, OIDA analysts predict.
OIDA experts derived these insights during the organization’s Optical Communications Networking Workshop and road-mapping event in Burlingame, Calif.
This workshop, sponsored by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), outlines the challenges facing core and access networks over the next decade.
Predictions for the next decade include:
- Ethernet will continue with strong growth over the time period
- 2015 network bit rates will be dominated by 40 gigabits per second in the core and 10 gigabits per second in metro areas, with higher rates seeing some penetration
- Total transmission capacity per carrier by 2015 will be in the 100 terabits-per-second range, which may strain core node capacities
- The rise of applications as fast as 1 gigabits per second, such as internet protocol and high definition television, will drive fiber to the residence and premise
- The lack of ubiquitous broadband access is a roadblock to the overall growth of broadband services throughout the U.S. telecommunications network
The workshop segmented the market into five areas that focused on core and metro networks, component technologies, access networks, access component technologies and roadblocks to delivering these technologies.
For more information contact the OIDA online at www.oida.org.
