White Paper

Date:
100G beyond 10km
A global study coherent and PAM4 Technology

By Ambroise Thirion
Contents
I. The challenge of going beyond 10km on 100G links...........................................................................3
II. Long reach technologies – Together with PAM4 and Coherent....................................................4
1. Coherent.............................................................................................................................................5
2. PAM4...................................................................................................................................................6
3. Coherent vs PAM4.........................................................................................................................7
III. An interconnect with and without active systems (transponder)...............................................8
IV. The 200G and 400G path.............................................................................................................................10
1. IM-DD Technology........................................................................................................................10
2. Coherent technology...................................................................................................................10
3. PAM4 Technology ..........................................................................................................................11
4. Form factors...............................................................................................................................12/13

White Paper - 100G beyond 10Km. A global study of Coherent and Pam4 Technology Page 2
I. The challenge of going beyond 10km on 100G links

The common transceivers on the market today

are designed to be used in volume and for
many access applications, the cost per gigabit
and per transceiver unit is key. While the
bitrates are today 1Gbits or 10Gbits per line, the
jump for 100Gbits is the 25Gbits baud rate (4x
25Gbaud). The technology remains similar, it’s a
simple modulation called “intensity
modulation” (transmitter side) with “direct
detection” (receiver side): IM-DD. This
technology is also called “on/off keying” (OOK)
or “non-return to zero” (NRZ).
This technology has been widely adopted by
the market and today used in all networks
infrastructures on earth. However, this
technology has a main limitation: higher is the
bitrate, shorter is the reach.

1Gbits Up to 200km
10Gbits Up to 80km
4x25Gbits Up to 40km
Figure 1 - maximum reach based on bitrates (limitation taken without any amplification,
dispersion compensation or any other technology)

This limitation is due by the chromatic

dispersion (CD) and the polarization mode
dispersion (PMD). It is possible to extend the
reach by adding active equipment such as
amplifier (EDFA), dispersion compensator (EDC)
and forward error correction (FEC).

White Paper - 100G beyond 10Km. A global study of Coherent and Pam4 Technology Page 3
II. Long reach technologies – Together with PAM4 and Coherent

1. Coherent - Coherent detection

The coherent technology has been devel- The IM-DD technology (regular 1G/10G/25G)
oped for three decades for copper links is using direct detection with linear or
(cable television). This technology has been limiting output, proportional to the light
too expensive compared to IM-DD (intensity intensity.
modulation and direct detection) until the
For Coherent application, a local oscillator
adoption of 100Gbits bitrate. The coherent
(LO) laser is added on the receiver side to
transmission is a combination of different
extract the two phases channels.
technologies embed in a single form factor:
- DSP (Digital Signal Processor) for
- Amplitude and phase modulation
high-speed analog- to- digital conversion
To increase the bandwidth, an advanced (ADC)
amplitude and phase modulation is used,
The DSP is an important component of the
giving the possibility to increase the number
coherent application as it runs different
of bits per symbol. The modulation is called
corrections and optimizations during the
QPSK.
optical to electrical conversion:
- Polarization multiplexing o Chromatic dispersion compensation
o Polarization mode dispersion
Because light is used for transmission, it is
compensation
possible to multiplex the signal with two
o Intradyne carrier recovery
channels by using two polarizations. By
combining the QPSK modulation and the The Coherent technology enables long
polarization multiplexing, the final solution is reach link at high bitrate but requires a
called PM-QPSK (Polarized-multiplexed + pluggable form factor with enough space
Quadruple phase-shift keying). and enough power. To perform long-haul
links, a transport platform is required with
short-distance client transceivers (SFP+ 10G,
QSFP28) and CFP/CFP2 ports.
The Coherent technology is today available
on different pluggable form factors known
as CFP and CFP2:

Figure 2: vertical and horizontal polarization

White Paper - 100G beyond 10Km. A global study of Coherent and Pam4 Technology Page 4
II. Long reach technologies – Together with PAM4 and Coherent

CFP Form Factor - The CFP is only DCO because it has

enough space and power to include the DSP.
- DCO (Digital Coherent Optics) - DSP On CFP2 form factor, an ACO version was
included in transceiver initially released by moving the DSP on the
host-board as it was too challenging to
o CFP DCO 100G ZR (up to 80km without
include it in the form factor.
amplification)
o CFP DCO 100G DWDM (metro – up to A CFP2 DCO version has been released in
1200km with amplification). 2017 as technology has been mature enough
o CFP DCO 100G DWDM (long-haul – up to to include the DSP into a CFP2 form factor.
2500km with amplification).
- The Coherent pluggable transceivers are
only available in CFP and CFP2 form factors.
There is no availability in CFP4 and QSFP28
form factors because there is not enough
power supplied to the components, neither
enough space.

CFP2 Form Factor

- DCO (Digital Coherent Optics) - DSP
included in transceiver
o CFP2 DCO 100G (up to 300km without
amplification)
o CFP2 DCO 100G DWDM (up to 800km
Key information’s about Coherent
with amplification).
pluggable tranceivers:
o CFP2 DCO 100G DWDM (up to 2500km
- There is no interoperability between DSP with amplification).
from different vendors. A complete optical
link must include two Coherent transceivers - ACO (Analog Coherent Optics) – DSP
from the same vendor for CFP-DCO and not included in transceiver but on
CFP2-DCO. host-board
Because the DSP is not included in o CFP2 ACO 100G DWDM (reach depends of
CFP2-ACO, it’s the host-board which must be EDC embed in host-board)
from the same vendor on both sides of the
link.
- A CFP-DCO and CFP2-DCO can be plugged
in any CFP/CFP2 ports if these are MSA
compliant and support CAUI for 100Gbits
interface
The CFP2-ACO can only be plugged in a
dedicated CFP2 Coherent port as the DSP is
on the host-board.

White Paper - 100G beyond 10Km. A global study of Coherent and Pam4 Technology Page 5
 II. Long reach technologies – Together with PAM4 and Coherent

2. PAM4 The main advantage of PAM4 is the easiness

to use regular electronics and optical
The IM-DD technology is based on NRZ
components suitable for small form factor
encoding with 1 bit per symbol. This
such as QSFP28 from factor. The power
technology is today largely used but has
consumption is drastically reduced and can
some limitations and increasing the output
be used for data centres interconnect
bitrates start to be challenging on fibre
application.
mainly due to dispersion (chromatic and
polarization). The main disadvantage is that PAM4
requires amplification and dispersion
The Coherent technology has adopted more
compensation system on the optical link for
advances modulations such as QPSK, 8QAM
reach longer than 5km at 100Gbits.
or 16QAM enabling to double, triple or
quadruple the bitrates. However, this The PAM4 technology is today available on
modulation requires an advanced technology QSFP28 pluggable form factors:
which is coherent detection on receiver side
and a DSP to correct the dispersion. While QSFP28 Form Factor
the cost per bit remains interesting, the
components costs are high, and the
pluggable modules require space and enough
power; therefore, they are only available on
CFP and CFP2 pluggable form factors.
The PAM4 modulation uses multiple levels of
pulse-amplitude enabling to carrying 2 bits
per symbols, doubling the bitrate:

QSFP28 PAM4 80km DWDM 100Ghz “Super

Channel” 4.5W (require amplifier).
NRZ / PAM2

PAM4

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 II. Long reach technologies – Together with PAM4 and Coherent

The QSFP28 PAM4 80km DWDM 100GHz

“super-channel” is a combination of two
50GHz carriers also called “dual-carrier”.
While it is using 2x 50GHz DWDM
wavelengths, the main advantage is the
compatibility with 100Ghz DWDM single
channel enabling direct upgrade from 10G
DWDM 100Ghz to 100G DWDM 100GHz:

100GHz DWDM

100GHz DWDM
MUX/DEMUX
10G SWITCH

10G SWITCH
10G SFP+

MUX/DEMUX
10G SFP+

AMPLIFIER

AMPLIFIER
10G SFP+ 10G SFP+

10G SFP+ 10G SFP+

10G SFP+ 10G 10G SFP+

100GHz DWDM
100GHz DWDM
100G SWITCH

100G SWITCH
MUX/DEMUX
100G
MUX/DEMUX

100G PAM4 100G PAM4

AMPLIFIER
AMPLIFIER

100G PAM4 100G PAM4

100G PAM4 100G PAM4

100G PAM4 100G PAM4

3. Coherent vs PAM4
Figure 3 - 10G to 100G DWDM upgrade (100G PAM4 is on QSFP28
form factor and requires amplification)

IM-DD (NRZ) Coherent PAM4

Components cost Low High Low
Power consump�on Low High Low
Density on equipment High Low High
Packaging CFP/CFP2/CFP4/QSFP28 CFP/CFP2 QSFP28
Laser packaging External / COB / Silicon ASIC (including DSP) Silicon Photonics
DWDM channel space 4x100Ghz (400Ghz) 1x50GHz (50GHz) 2x50Ghz (100Ghz)
Compa�bility with 100GHz Yes, 4x channels Yes, 1x channel Yes, 1x channel
mux/demux
Compa�bility with 50GHz Yes, 1x channel No
No
mux/demux
Possibility tupgrade Yes Yes
No
from 10Gbps DWDM
Transmission over long Yes Yes
distance - 80km without - 80km with
No
amplifica�on amplifica�on
- >80km with
amplifica�on
Transponder pla�orm Not required Required Op�onal
Applica�on Intra DC Metro / Long haul Inter DC / Metro

White Paper - 100G beyond 10Km. A global study of Coherent and Pam4 Technology Page 7
III. An interconnect with and without active systems (transponder)

In today’s market, it is possible to obtain 100G

optical transceivers with either PAM-4 or
Coherent modulation – the figure below shows
the reach available with each type:

OIF COHERENT
PAM - 4
IEE
0 10 40 80 Distance (Km) 1,000s
Source: 2016 ACG Research

The PAM-4 solution covers a portion of the

optical reach needed to interconnect data
centers. Below 10km, IEEE 802.3ba 100G
pluggable optics are readily available with
100GBASE-LR4 supporting 10km reach in a
QSFP28 package. The 100GBASE-ER4
specification for 40km reach has been more
challenging for optics suppliers to deliver and
remains either in larger packages (example,
CFP/CFP2 with SOA or QSFP28 with FEC on
host board) or in nonstandard formats,
meaning non-interoperable across vendors. So
where does the PAM-4 technology fit? In
general, its initial fit appears to be in the
<40km range as an alternative to existing,
pluggable solutions. The solution also plays in
the 40–80km range as an alternative to optical
DCI/coherent DWDM solutions for some
deployment scenarios.
Based solely upon reach, a logical question is
how much of the optical DCI/coherent DWDM
market is covered by 40–80km? ACG Research
recently completed a worldwide survey of data
center service providers, including network
service providers, cloud service providers,
Internet content providers and Internet
eXchange providers. One of the questions
asked of the service providers was the
proportion of optical reach needed to cover
their data center interconnections today and in
2019. What was found is that service providers
on average believe that 30–80km optical reach
is needed for approximately 30% of their data
center interconnections.

White Paper - 100G beyond 10Km. A global study of Coherent and Pam4 Technology Page 8
 III. An interconnect with and without active systems (transponder)

For 80 km application, different are scenarios

are feasible, both with Coherent and PAM4:

With demarcation line

TRANSPONDER

TRANSPONDER

10G /100G
10G /100G

SWITCH
SWITCH

80Km
COHERENT COHERENT
TRANSPONDER

TRANSPONDER
AMPLIFIER

AMPLIFIER

10G /100G
10G /100G

SWITCH
SWITCH

80Km
PAM4 PAM4

SWITCH
SWITCH

80Km

100G
100G

COHERENT COHERENT
AMPLIFIER

AMPLIFIER

SWITCH
SWITCH

80Km
100G
100G

PAM4 PAM4

White Paper - 100G beyond 10Km. A global study of Coherent and Pam4 Technology Page 9
IV. The 200G and 400G path

200Gbits and 400Gbits is a straightforward

path thanks to Coherent and PAM4
technologies. The 100G is already a
combination of 4x25Gbits (IM-DD) with direct
detection. To keep a 25/28G baud rate, extra
modulations are required combined with other
components such as DSP.
Next step is to move with a laser and DSP
running at 50/56Gbaud but this technology is
not available in volume yet.

1. IM-DD Technology
IM-DD 100Gbits (regular 100G transceivers, max 25km
without FEC, 40km with FEC).

25Gbaud 4x DWDM 100 Gbits

laser Multiplexing bitrate

2. Coherent technology
Coherent 100G DP-QSPK

28Gbaud x2 QPSK x2 Polarization 100 Gbits

laser + DSP Modulation multiplexing bitrate

Coherent 200G 16QAM

28Gbaud x4 16QAM x2 Polarization 200 Gbits

laser + DSP Modulation multiplexing bitrate

White Paper - 100G beyond 10Km. A global study of Coherent and Pam4 Technology Page 10
IV. The 200G and 400G path

3. PAM4 Technology
PAM4 100G (28Gbaud)

+ + =
28Gbaud x2 PAM4 x2 WDM 100 Gbits
laser Modulation multiplexing bitrate

PAM4 200G (28Gbaud)

+ + =
28Gbaud x2 PAM4 x4 WDM 200 Gbits
laser Modulation multiplexing bitrate

PAM4 400G (28Gbaud)

+ + =
28Gbaud x2 PAM4 x8 WDM 400 Gbits
laser Modulation multiplexing bitrate

PAM4 400G (56Gbaud)

+ + =
56Gbaud x2 PAM4 x4 WDM 400 Gbits
laser Modulation multiplexing bitrate

White Paper - 100G beyond 10Km. A global study of Coherent and Pam4 Technology Page 11
IV. The 200G and 400G path

4. Form factors
To support these new technologies, a bunch of new form
factors are coming on the market*. Some will be popular
while some will remain for a niche market.

The QSFP-DD, QSFP-56 and OSFP might be popular with

PAM4 technology, while CFP8 might be a good candidate
for the Coherent application*.

µQSFP
µQSFP
Bitrate: 40G, 100G and 200G
Electrical: 4x25G (NRZ) / 4x50G (PAM4)
Optical: 4x25G (NRZ) / 4x50G (PAM4)
Power diss.: up to 3.5W
Mgmt proto.: I2C
Size: narrow than QSFP, same length
as QSFP

QSFP-56
QSFP-56
Bitrate: 200G
Electrical: 4x50G (PAM4)
Optical: 4x50G (PAM4)
Power diss.: up to 3.5W
Mgmt proto.: I2C
Size: Same size and shape as QSFP+
and QSFP28

QSFP-DD
QSFP-DD – QSFP Double Density
Bitrate: 200G and 400G
Electrical: 8x25G (NRZ) / 8x50G (PAM4)
Optical: 8x25G (NRZ) / 8x50G (PAM4)
Power diss.: up to 12W
Mgmt proto.: I2C
Size: slightly larger than a QSFP+
and QSFP28

White Paper - 100G beyond 10Km. A global study of Coherent and Pam4 Technology Page 12
IV. The 200G and 400G path

OSFP
OSFP – Octal Small Format Pluggable
Bitrate: 400G
Electrical: 8x50Gbps (25Gbaud PAM4)
Optical: 8x50Gbps (25Gbaud PAM4)
Power diss.: 7.5W to 15W
Mgmt proto.: I2C
Size: slightly larger than a QSFP+
and QSFP28

CFP 8
CFP8
Bitrate: 400G
Electrical: 16x25G (NRZ) / 8x50G (PAM4)
Optical: 16x25G (NRZ) / 8x50G (PAM4)
/ 4x100G (PAM4)
Power diss.: 4W to 24W
Mgmt proto.: MDIO
Size: similar size to a CFP2

*Unavailable in the current market. This is a guide only

White Paper - 100G beyond 10Km. A global study of Coherent and Pam4 Technology Page 13
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