Advancements and Applications of Coherent Pluggable Technology in High Bandwidth Transport Networks - BRKOPT-2556#
Cisco Live US 2025 (San Diego) digest Program Core pick San Diego · 8–12 June 2025
Anuj Malik (Cisco)
- Why: Coherent pluggables are collapsing the boundary between the IP and optical layers — directly relevant to DC/WAN interconnect, where the same pluggable now serves router ports and line systems.
- What: The technical underpinnings of coherent pluggables — tunable lasers, high-speed ADC/DACs, DSP algorithms — plus performance comparisons (data rates, reach, power consumption) against traditional coherent solutions, real-world deployment scenarios, and the trend toward IP/optical convergence (from abstract only).
- How: Coherent DSP packaged into pluggable transceiver form factors, compared against embedded coherent line systems on rate/reach/power metrics.
- Where applicable: High-bandwidth transport and DCI. Vendor talk, so expect the case studies to favor Cisco outcomes, but the component physics and metric trade-offs are general.