Evaulation_Engineering_March_2020 - 26

OPTICAL COMMUNICATIONS TEST

Keysight measurement solution for integrated photonics.
Copyright Keysight Technologies. Reproduced with Permission.

serves essential basic needs, but is now ready to cope with today's reality, including cloud-based connectivity for reporting,
automated results storage, and job management."
He continued, "This represents further proof that EXFO constantly invests in its traditional product lines, but with a clear
vision to make field handheld devices more and more connected
to enable new types of functionality made possible through
the cloud and to drive better efficiencies in the field and higher
quality networks. With these recent additions to our portfolio,
we can claim we have the most connected fleet of optical test
equipment that covers all essential optical testing needs, from
fiber inspection probes (FIPs), to power meters, optical fiber
multimeters (OFM), optical loss test sets (OLTS), and optical
time-domain reflectometers."
You can now access your test data in real-time and provide
automated results processing in accordance with standardized
methods and procedures across all your field teams, either for
in-house or subcontracted jobs, he said, adding, "In the end,
data is power, and gaining visibility and control over fiber infrastructures in terms of quality, performance, and readiness
for future generation applications (video, edge computing, 5G,
etc.) is paramount."
Tremblay-Lavoie noted that EXFO will be exhibiting at OFC
this year. "OFC is a major event for EXFO and has been always
very successful for us," he said. "Given our broad portfolio of
test and measurement solutions offerings, covering multiple
applications from R&D, labs, and field, it is a perfect place to
showcase our 35-plus years of expertise."
For the 2020 edition, he said, EXFO will showcase its T&M
portfolio within key categories, the first being solutions for network equipment vendors. This first category covers applications
including passive optical component test as well as 400G/800G

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EVALUATION ENGINEERING MARCH 2020

test and addresses an approach to
testing optical transceivers at every
step of their lifecycle.
Second will be solutions for
high-speed optical transformations. "Here we can think of test
scenarios covering datacenter applications, interconnect-anything
from core to edge," he said. "The
various technologies now available
in a context of 5G transformation
bring an unseen level of complexity
in the optical transport layer. This
is where we will demonstrate the
interoperability between various
systems and show the flexibility and
ease of use of EXFO solutions in the
process." He added that once again
the company will partner with other
Ethernet Alliance members in specific interop events to demonstrate switching and mixing from
different line rates (25G, 50G, 100G, 200G, 400G, and beyond)
with different protocols, including Ethernet, CPRI (Common
Public Radio Interface), eCPRI (enhanced CPRI), and RF over
CPRI.
Still addressing the second category, he said, "Related to 5G
networks, we will be demonstrating interoperability related to
X-haul architectures with Xilinx." He further explained, "As
a foundational 5G topic, we see that operators and network
owners are joining forces to re-use their fiber assets to expand
the network capacities and allocate fibers previously used for
FTTH/PON (fiber to the home/passive optical network), or in a
metro ring, to now support the distribution of fiber bandwidth
to 5G antennas. In such context, the use of DWDM technology
is ramping up, and so EXFO will be presenting all its portfolio
of xWDM test solution for fiber-deep and fiber-convergence
applications-in this case, mainly optical spectrum analyzers
(OSA) and channel checkers."
The third category addresses the company's field-testing portfolio, test-automation, and the cloud-based ecosystem. "This
represents most of our optical portfolio designed for field applications," he said. "This is a trend we are leading in the market,
and we will be focusing on showing the benefits of leveraging
the cloud in day-to-day test processes."
Finally, he mentioned a T&M Center PIC (photonic integrated
circuit) testing demonstration. "One of the interesting collaborations EXFO will be involved with at OFC this year will be our
participation with MPI Corp. and HPE to present a true wafer
chipset production test leveraging our photonic integrated circuit testing solutions (CTP10). Hosted at the T&M Center, this
demonstration will be a replica of a real manufacturing use case.
People will definitively be impressed by the dimensions of the
demo setup, realizing the paradox in between the size of the
system required to produce what is in fact, the smallest piece of
optical components (PIC)."
Evaulation_Engineering_March_2020

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