A new generation of high-speed electro-optical transceivers and flexible bandwidth wavelength selective switches for coherent DCI: the QAMeleon project approach

The ever-increasing demands in traffic fueled by bandwidth hungry applications are pushing data centers to their limits challenging the capacity and scalability of currently established transceiver and switching technologies in data center interconnection (DCI) networks. Coherent optics emerged as a promising solution for inter-DCIs offering unprecedented capacities closer to data centers and relaxing the power budget restrictions of the link. QAMeleon, an EU funded R and D project, is developing a new generation of faster and greener sliceable bandwidth-variable electro-optical transceivers and WSS switches able to handle up to 128 Gbaud optical signals carrying flexible M-QAM constellations and novel modulation techniques. A summary of the progress on the QAMeleon transponder and Reconfigurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexer (ROADM) concepts is presented in this paper.