Conference OFC / NFOEC 2008

Conference OFC / NFOEC 2008, which focuses on optical communications (Optical Fiber Communication / National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference), held in San Diego, California at the end of February. This annual conference focuses on current U.S. transportation optical telecommunications, a sector which is highly holder, with the explosion of multimedia content on the Internet. Each year this conference is becoming increasingly international. In fact, traffic on the Internet constantly double every 16 months: daily trade in 9000 reaching peta-bytes (9 billion gigabytes) and should reach 21 000 peta-bytes in 2012.
The major theme of discussion in the previous edition focused on the adoption of 40Gigabit / s (Gbps), and in particular whether it should not work directly on the next generation (100Gbit / s). This year, the 40Gbit / s and 100Gbit / s have been assimilated into the same category and, despite the relatively slow for these components, they have been a major focus of this conference. The market for components for ultra high speed is estimated at $ 900 million for the year 2012, representing 10% of components for optical telecommunications.
Thus, many components to 40Gbit / s were presented at the exhibition (of high power lasers to modulators and demodulators via fleas specific treatments), and showed that the technology was mature and treated. Moreover, these transfers are already used in some deployments of FTTH (Fiber To The Home).
Another very popular technology on the show was the SFP + technology for new optical connectors. Smaller than its competitors and more recently standardized, this technology can increase the number of optical ports and card supports the new standards and 10Gbit / s in contrast to his predecessor (SFP).
Since the technology 40Gbit / s are developed, the main discussions focused on the development of technologies 100Gbit / s and beyond, and the specification of standards along with these innovations.
The conference was also a scientific meeting, several research papers were presented during those few days. So Alcatel-Lucent and its group of Bell Labs research showed how they had managed to develop a transmission reaches record 16.4 Terabit / s (16 400 Gbit / s), over 2 550 km using 164 channels to 100Gbit / s multiplexed and this sets a new speed record.
This demonstration, along with three other articles on Bell Labs circuits transmissions 100Gbit / s (on a receiver on a bipolar modulator and another modulator) showed that this new technology and Ethernet 100Gbit / s approaching commercialization.
This market is still developing and has gone bearer for the coming years with new innovations.