Ciena introduces WaveLogic Ai to meet challenges of autonomous, self-driving network

Ciena unveiled Monday its WaveLogic Ai, a programmable coherent modem that delivers maximum network performance at minimum cost. With its combination of scale, automation and intelligence, WaveLogic Ai is a foundational enabling technology for a self-driving network that is critical in the era of IoT, machine learning and disruptive on-demand services.

With WaveLogic AI, operators can take advantage of improved transport economics, gain new insights and control into the efficiencies of their network, and use new levels of automation to compete and win in the new on-demand economy.

WaveLogic Ai provides real-time optical networking performance data as well as the tunability required to build on-demand, programmable networks. It changes transport economics radically by driving double the capacity per channel, three times the distance at the equivalent capacity, and four times the service density; while maximizing channel capacity for all applications with tunability from 100G to 400G in 50G increments. It also delivers new levels of visibility and the ability to accurately engineer the network for optimal capacity and maximum efficiency.

Ciena’s WaveLogic Ai technology platform operates at a selectable baud rate of 35Gbaud or 56Gbaud, giving users the ability to trade channel throughput for optical performance and spectrum usage while delivering power and space efficiency benefits over both fixed and flexible grid photonic line systems.

At 56Gbaud, the higher level of serial integration, coupled with higher- complexity signal constellations enables a modem that provides the lowest cost and lowest power per bit per km, leveraging fewer components by using only one laser, modulator and receiver.

WaveLogic Ai is a coherent modem that can provide the ability to tune capacity from single carrier 100G to 400G in 50G increments. The range of capacities are available at 56Gbaud, with 100G to 250G channel capacities available at 35Gbaud. This allows network operators, and content and cloud providers to better match capacity to system margin, all with a single technology that can address any application, from high capacity, short-reach metro to ultra-long- haul and submarine.

It adopts Ciena’s soft-decision Forward Error Correction (FEC) and DSP algorithms, which can correct for up to 3.4 percent errors in the transported signal, operators can deploy higher capacity channels over longer reaches and eliminate regens from the network.

WaveLogic Ai uses advanced high-performance, multi-dimensional modulation to implement 400G on a single carrier supporting short reach applications capable of reaching 300km distances. At the other extreme, WaveLogic Ai can operate a single-carrier 100G over 7,000-kilometer terrestrial distances without regeneration, or equally across the Paci c for submarine applications. Operators can match capacity for applications with reaches that fall between these examples using 150G, 200G, 250G, 300G, or 350G channels.

Using deep systems-level expertise, Ciena has embedded unique, real-time link monitoring capabilities, never before available, into WaveLogic Ai. Operators can now understand exactly how much margin is currently present in the network, as well as the optimal capacity they can deploy.

With the embedded instrumentation in WaveLogic Ai, a comprehensive photonic network monitor can now be realized. Combined with Software-Defined Networking (SDN) analytics, applications such as predictive link failure now become possible, allowing operators to pre-empt outages with scheduled maintenance activities.


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