The most recent version of Nokia’s coherent photonic service engine was unveiled; it offers improvements in capacity, range, and power efficiency over earlier iterations.
Nokia executives said the vendor has already engaged with at least 20 different customers about the technology and is planning field trials with more than 10 customers.
The PSE-6s’ standout features include the ability to push 800G wavelengths over a distance of more than 2,000 kilometers and support for transmissions up to 2.4 Tbps with up to 1.2 Tbps per wavelength. This contrasts with the PSE-V, which was released in 2020, and its 600G capacity and 90 Gigabaud rate. The speed at which data is sent along a communications channel is simply referred to as the baud rate.
According to Nokia’s Federico Guillen, President of Network Infrastructure, the company’s new optics have “unmatched market capabilities.” and are suitable for use cases spanning local, metro, and subsea cable deployments. He stressed the PSE-6s’ 2,000km reach will help save customers not only money in having to deploy less equipment, but also power.
Ed Englehart, VP of Engineering for Nokia’s optical product line, added that while 800G Ethernet demand may not have reached its peak yet, Nokia stands ready to support it in addition to 400GE and 100GE applications. Simply put, the idea is to enable a one-and-done upgrade capable of meeting future bandwidth needs.
Englehart claims that by switching to a 5nm chip technology, which allows for more processing to be done on the silicon and consequently reduces the size and power consumption needed for its optics, Nokia was able to achieve the gains it has with the PSE-6s. The signal processing algorithms were also changed to enable transmission over longer distances.
Guillen claimed that despite the PSE-6s’ recent launch, there is a lot of interest in them. He claimed that it has already discussed the technology with at least 20 different customers and is preparing field trials with more than 10 customers. He added that the beginning of those trials is anticipated for the second half of this year.
Nokia competes with manufacturers in the coherent optical market of Cisco’s Acacia, Ciena, and Infinera. Cisco debuted a coherent pluggable module in late 2021 capable of supporting up to 1.2 Tbps per wavelength. Meanwhile, Ciena offers the 800G capable WaveLogic 5 Extreme, and Infinera tackles 800G with its Ice6 Turbo coherent optical engine.
Last month, Dell’Oro forecast revenue from the optical transport equipment market will reach $17 billion by 2027, a figure down slightly from its previous prediction that the segment would hit $18 billion by 2026. The analyst firm noted 400G wavelength deployments are expected to dominate within that timeframe and tipped coherent wavelength shipments on WDM systems to reach 1.2 million by 2027.