SC203 - 400, 800Gb/s and Beyond Optical Communications Systems: Design and Design Trade-offs
07 Mar 2027
08:30 - 12:30
Short Course Level
Advanced Beginner
Short Course Description
The speed and capacity of optical communication systems have increased steadily over recent decades—driven first by telecommunications, then by cloud and internet services, and now by AI computing. To meet ever-growing bandwidth demands, telecom carriers and hyperscalers are actively deploying 400 Gb/s across their backbone, metro, inter-data center, and intra-data center networks. Looking ahead, deployment plans for 800 Gb/s and 1.6 Tb/s are rapidly expanding, alongside a trend toward flex-rate systems that optimize transmission speed and capacity for specific fiber distances.
The first part of this course provides a comprehensive overview of the drivers and applications behind 400 Gb/s+ optical systems in data center and telecom provider networks. It outlines core operator requirements around cost, power consumption, physical footprint, reliability, optical performance, and interoperability. Additionally, the course addresses practical design challenges in long-haul, metro, and data center applications, offering a critical review of current building blocks. Key areas of focus include modulation format implementations, the trade-off between design complexity and transmission reach, and next-generation architectures beyond 1 Tb/s, including super-channel, flex-rate, and highly parallel short-reach systems.
Short Course Benefits
This course should enable you to:
- Identify key requirements and drivers for 400Gb/s applications
- Understand key building blocks of coherent systems
- Understand digital signal processing algorithms in coherent systems
- Discuss non-coherent alternative solutions in short-reach systems
- Describe the availability and performance of 400Gb/s.
- Discuss 400Gb/s transmission limitations
- Understand 400Gb/s data center networks
- Summarize 400Gb/s standards activities
- Describe drivers and technologies for systems beyond 400Gb/s
Short Course Audience
The course is intended for engineers and technical managers who want an up-to-date overview of 400Gb/s and beyond optical communications systems, including technologies, applications in different networks, and design trade-offs. The course requires some understanding of basic optical transmission systems.
Instructors
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Chongjin Xie
PhotonicX AI, United States
Chongjin Xie is the founder and CEO of PhotonicX AI. Before PhotonicX AI, he was a senior director at Alibaba Cloud, Alibaba Group, responsible for Alibaba data center optics technologies, and was a DMTS at Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent, doing research on optical communication systems and networks. He did his postdoctoral research at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden from 1999 to 2001, and received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from Beijing University of Posts & Telecommunications in 1996 and 1999, respectively.
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Ezra Ip
NEC Labs, United States
Ezra Ip is a Senior Staff Member at NEC Laboratories America, and his research interests spans from coherent optical transmission systems, digital signal processing techniques, space division multiplexing systems, optical fiber sensing. He received his B.E. (Hons) degree from the University of Canterbury in 2002, and M.S. Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University in 2004 and 2008, respectively.