| This year’s Big Communications Event (BCE) in Austin, Texas, will include a Components Track dedicated to the semiconductor, optical and platform components enabling the 4G/5G virtualized wireless infrastructure and data center interconnects up to 400G.
We are seeing major changes to the mobile network infrastructure. The industry has moved from 2G/3G networks to heterogeneous networks with multi-radio base stations supporting 2G, 3G,LTE, LTE Advanced and WiFi. These developments have been enabled by advanced system-on-chip and software solutions. The latest solutions support advanced carrier aggregation and high order MIMO for LTE Advanced Pro and pave the way for 5G wireless networks supporting multiple radio technologies including millimeter wave. The wireless network infrastructure is moving from dedicated hardware systems to virtualized systems running on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) platforms from rackmount servers to rack scale server architectures based on Open Compute (OCP). The demands of increased coverage, growing data bandwidth and high-service availability will require carriers to deploy a range of hardware platforms and virtual functions across their geographical locations. Virtualization of the mobile network infrastructure using SDN and NFV promises significantly increased flexibility and lower costs but is also critical for the development of 5G networks. Within data centers and between data centers, 100G connections are rapidly replacing 10G and 40G connections. Costs for optical modules and active cables have dropped significantly but there are still many opportunities for increasing capacity and reducing costs. PAM4 and other advanced modulation techniques have become cost-effective with the latest DSP technology. Dual lambda and single lambda 100G solutions can significantly reduce costs for connections within the data center and between data centers. New optical module MSAs, including microQSFP and QSFP-DD, offer significantly greater port density and higher bandwidth interfaces. The IEEE has agreed port specifications for 400G Ethernet and the first 400G components are becoming available. Silicon photonics and other technologies are enabling new solutions for on-board optics that can further drive network capacity within data centers. The Components Track at Light Reading’s BCE will bring all these developments together and set them in the context of the latest semiconductor and optical component solutions. These sessions will offer a unique opportunity to hear and gauge industry progress and understand the components enabling these dramatic changes to wireless infrastructure and data center interconnects. I hope you can join me in Austin at the end of May for what will be a series of thought-provoking and informative sessions. Seriously – do you think you can afford to miss it? Reserve your seat today and see if you qualify for free admission.* *BCE provides complimentary admission for verified employees of service providers, operators, financial and educational institutions, utilities and government agencies. |