Abstract
Much of 2009 and 2010 will see the communications laser business digging
itself out of the mess created by the worldwide economic slump. But the
medium-to-long term prospects for these devices now look quite good.
Much of 2009 and 2010 will see the communications laser business digging
itself out of the mess created by the worldwide economic slump. But the
medium-to-long term prospects for these devices now look quite good.
In the long-haul segment of the network, the scene now seems set for a major
upgrade of carrier backbones. This will lead to enhanced demand for
high-performance DFB and even FP lasers. This new demand will come both from
the shift up to 100 Gbps that many of the leading carriers are considering and
from the more gradual changeover to a WDM infrastructure compliant with the
ITU-TA' s OTN standards. CIR believes that this shift will mean the arrival of
the first ever high volume market for tunable lasers, along with a substantial
new market opening up for lasers in ROADMs.
The re-architecting of the core network in WDM form also raises the question
of whether new roles will open up for pump lasers as optical amplifiers assume
a new prominence
Lasers for the new carrier network will be high value-added products that can
be sold on the basis of performance and superb engineering. But the low-end of
the laser market now looks on the verge of explosion too.
In the LAN, for example, processor speeds have caught up with the capabilities
of 10 GigE. That means that 10 GigE is about to go down the same mass market
road as GigE has done in the past five years or so. Good news for the VCSEL
business it would seem. PONs also continue their steady growth into the home
and the latest active optical cabling may not just be a limited volume
offering for the InfiniBand market but the way forward to new kinds of optical
interfaces for the PC and for high end consumer video. 10 GigE and PONs are
potentially huge markets for diode lasers and they are only just beginning to
take off too.
But this is not to say that the way forward for the communications laser
business will be an easy one or the decisions that product and planning
managers in this business will have to take will be an easy one.
There are certainly dangers of taking the wrong direction technologically, for
example. In the data center the speed at which single-mode fiber is adopted
will radically impact the kinds of lasers that are used for data
communications. This raises the question of whether the new breed of LW VCSELs
that are about to hit the market will have sufficient credibility to be widely
adopted. New kinds of lasers may also be needed for 100 GigE, a technology on
the verge of commercialization that no one would have taken seriously five
years ago.
Meanwhile, in the public network there is question of what type of lasers are
needed for the next generation of PONs which may use WDM and/or operate at 10
Gbps, and with tunable lasers becoming a volume item, the old question of
which tuning technology is optimal will raise its head again.
This report analyzes and quantified emerging opportunities across the entire
communications laser space. It covers all the major laser architectures and
technologies; DFB, FP, DBR, VCSEL, tunables, etc. as well as the opportunities
in communications for pump lasers and some of the newer types of lasers such
as quantum dot lasers and silicon lasers. It also discusses the latest
innovations in laser manufacturing, packaging and integration and how this
will play out in the marketplace.
We have also included in this report an analysis of the strategies being
adopted by laser firms both large and small and, as with all CIR reports, this
study also includes a detailed five-year forecast of the markets covered.
Methodology
CIR has been covering the communications laser and transceiver/transponder
markets for well over a decade and therefore has the ability to analyze the
market from an insider' s perspective. In addition, to provide the depth of
knowledge required to create a market study of this kind, CIR researchers have
interviewed major laser and transceiver/transponder firms to “take the
temperature” of the current market in the light of the worldwide
recession - likely expenditures by service providers, IT departments, and
network managers over the next few years and the rising tide of technological
change.
CIR' s primary research was supplemented with information from previous CIR
reports as well as knowledge gained during many custom consulting assignments
related to optical components and modules. Product data sheets, marketing
documents, and company Web sites also served as additional sources of
secondary information.
The forecasting methodology used here is explained more fully later in the
report, but ultimately goes back to assessment of port counts, some of which
are provided in the main body of the report. These are derived by information
gained from equipment manufacturers and end users combined with familiarity of
the current needs of networks. Forecasts are broken down by laser technology,
networking type and data rates as appropriate.
Table of Contents
Executive Summary
- E.1 Summary of Opportunities and Challenges
- E.1.1 High Volumes, Low Margins: Opportunities in PONs and Consumer
Electronics
- E.1.2 Modest Volumes, Better Margins: Opportunities and Innovations in
Ethernet, Parallel Optics and WDM
- E.2 Laser Firms to Watch
- E.3 The Growing Importance of Optical Integration
- E.4 Summary of Forecasts
Chapter One: Introduction
- 1.1 Background to this Report
- 1.1.1 Long-Haul and Lasers: 100 Gbps and Tunable
- 1.1.2 Lasers at the Low-End: PONs and Next Generation Data Networks
- 1.1.3 Beyond the Communications Market: Of Mice, Computer Interconnects
and Consumer Electronics
- 1.1.2 ASPs and Innovations
- 1.2 Goals and Scope of this Report
- 1.3 Methodology of this Report
- 1.4 Plan of Report
Chapter Two Technological Evolution of Telecom and Datacom Lasers
- 2.1 Introduction
- 2.2 Fabry-Perot Lasers
- 2.2.1 Recent FP Supplier and Technology Developments
- 2.3 Distributed Feed-Back Lasers
- 2.3.1 EMLs
- 2.2.2 Recent DFB Supplier and Technology Developments
- 2.3 VCSELs
- 2.3.1 Technology Directions for VCSELs
- 2.3.2 Recent VCSEL Supplier Developments
- 2.4 Tunable Lasers
- 2.4.1 Tunable lasers: Mechanisms and Costs
- 2.4.2 Tunable lasers: The Changing Supply Structure
- 2.5 The Future of Pump Lasers
- 2.6 Light Sources for POF
- 2.7 Other Types of Communications Lasers
- 2.8 Modulation and Modulators
- 2.8.1 Modulation Issues At Higher Speeds
- 2.8.2 EMLs and External Modulation
- 2.8.3 Advanced Modulation Schemes
- 2.8.4 A Note on Silicon Photonics and Modulation
- 2.8.5 Long-Term Solutions
- 2.9 Optical Integration and the Future of Communications Lasers
- 2.9.1 Silicon Photonics
- 2.9.2 The Future of Optical Integration for Lasers
- 2.10 Other Developments in Laser Manufacturing Technology
Chapter Three: Demand Patterns for Telecom and Datacom Lasers
- 3.1 Introduction
- 3.2 The Future of High-End Communications Lasers in the OTN Era
- 3.3 Lasers, Enterprise Networks and the Mainstreaming of 10 GigE
- 3.4 What 40/100 GigE Will Mean for the Laser Business
- 3.5 Lasers for PONs
- 3.5.1 PON Deployment: State of the Art
- 3.5.2 PON Transceivers and Lasers
- 3.5.2 New Technologies and New Markets for PONs: The Laser Industry
Perspective
- 3.6.1 AOCs
- 3.6.2 Optical USB
- 3.7 Applications-of-the-future: Lasers inside the Computer and Inside the
Home
- 3.7.1 Lasers, Optical Backplanes and Optical Computing
- 3.7.2 Chip-to-chip Communications
- 3.7.2 Fiber-in-the-Home
- 3.6 Closely Related Non-Communications Applications
- 3.6.1 Laser Mice
- 3.6.2 Sensors
Chapter Four: Market Forecasts (Volume and $$$$)
- 4.1 Forecasting Methodology
- 4.1.1 A Note on Pricing
- 4.1.2 A Note on the Ratio of Lasers to Ports
- 4.1.3 Sources of Error and Alternative Scenarios
- 4.2 FP Lasers Forecasts
- 4.3 DFB Laser Forecasts
- 4.4 EML Lasers Forecasts
- 4.5 VCSEL Forecasts
- 4.6 Tunable Lasers
- 4.7.1 Conventional Parallel Optics Forecast
- 4.8 Pump Lasers
- 4.9 Summary of Forecasts
ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS USED IN THIS REPORT
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
