Title: Challenges and Technology behind 10GBASE-LRM and Multi-Gigabit Communications

Abstract  

With the continued popularity of high-bandwidth applications such as Skype and YouTube, the need for higher capacity public and private networks has become critical. At the same time, the new applications attract new users to the Internet, and further increase the bandwidth requirements. While new network installations can be planned for a certain amount of growth capacity, expanding the capacity of existing network infrastructure can be prohibitively expensive if additional cabling must be installed.

The bulk of the existing Enterprise backbone networks consist of relatively inexpensive multimode fiber, often installed when the maximum data transmission rate was 100Mb/s. Over time, these networks were upgraded to 1Gb/s, and are now reaching their maximum capacity, obviating a move to 10Gb/s links. At typical transmission distances of 100-220m, modal dispersion prevents the use of data rates beyond 3Gb/s. An early but expensive approach to operating at the 10Gb/s data rate uses Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) requiring 4 lasers, and 4 receivers per channel (LX4). Recently, the IEEE has approved a new 10Gb/s Ethernet specification, 802.3aq (10GBASE-LRM), which is a more cost effective approach in using signal processing techniques to overcome the fiber impairments and allowing 1 wavelength to carry data at 10Gb/s, at up to 220m.

The presentation will cover the Enterprise backbone market, the technical challenges, and the technology approaches being used to make this protocol practical.