High-Performance versus Power-Efficient Coherent Optical Interfaces: Spectral Efficiency and Hardware Count Comparison

Power-efficient coherent optical interfaces are being developed to meet the increasingly demanding capacity and footprint requirements of data center interconnection (DCI) applications. Simultaneously, progress is being made in high-performance interfaces, traditionally addressing high-end applications, which is the case of long-haul and subsea deployments. Interestingly, both types of coherent interfaces may compete directly in regional and large metro network deployments. This paper provides insight on how both types of interfaces are expected to perform in these networks. With that aim, a set of media channel (MCh) formats to be supported with each type of optical interfaces is introduced along with a network design framework that includes a simplified optical performance model and a MCh provisioning algorithm. The simulation results obtained in two reference networks highlight the extent of hardware savings and the additional carried traffic load supported when coherent interfaces designed primarily for high-performance are deployed in regional-sized networks instead of alternative implementations that relax performance requirements if favor of power consumption and footprint savings.