At the “China Light Summit Forum and 2020 China Optical Communication Industry Development Conference” held a few days ago, Zhao Wenyu, director of the Broadband Network Research Department of the Institute of Information and Communications Technology, said that the three major infrastructures of the “new infrastructure”-the information base construction, converged infrastructure, and innovative infrastructure make new applications and new services emerge in an endless stream, which will further accelerate the development of optical transmission technology.

From a technical point of view, high-speed, large-capacity, and all-optical networking is still the core requirement of optical transport networks. And the single-wave rate is evolving from 400Gb/s to 800G/1T+, 5G fronthaul triggers 25G WDM competition; spectrum expansion to increase transmission capacity has aroused industry attention, and space division multiplexing has started local commercial use; ROADM-based optical switching technology is already available to operators which has been widely used.

In addition, the development of data centers and AI has promoted the development of optical transmission toward openness and intelligence. There are already many application scenarios for optical network + AI. For example, network traffic analysis and prediction: Analyzing and predicting user traffic behavior, and receiving it through timing appointments, business optimization, and other controls to achieve optimization and automatic deployment based on user traffic analysis and prediction. Another example is the analysis and prediction of network health. AI is introduced to analyze and predict the health of the network in advance to prevent related health degradation and failure phenomena and to realize early warning of failures and proactive maintenance.

In addition, in the field of optical transport networks, especially in the development of optical modules, the trend of photonic integration is obvious. At present, small and medium-sized PICs have matured and achieved widespread commercial use. The development of silicon optics and the III-V family influences each other. InP technology has high maturity, and its performance in active devices such as lasers and modulators is better than similar silicon optics; the potential advantage of silicon optics integration is the use of microelectronics CMOS technology. And it’s easy to achieve hybrid integration of optical and electrical chips.

Zhao Wenyu introduced that with the rapid growth of internal traffic in data centers, switch capacity, port density and speed, and power consumption are all facing challenges, and OBO and CPO have become important development directions. It is reported that in September this year, the International Photonics & Electronics Committee (IPEC) was formally established. The first batch of members included China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, Meituan, Huawei, Fiberhome, Bochuang Technology, CIG (Cambridge Industries Group), FOC (Fujitsu Optical Components), Hisense Broadband, Source Photonics, Yamaichi, etc., aiming at the development of cutting-edge optical module technology.