TECHNOLOGY NOTE

BENEFITS OF ICE6 AND

ICE6 and ICE6 Turbo Optical Engines ICE6 TURBO
Minimize Optical TCO with Industry-leading Performance ■ Maximize wavelength capacity-reach
with ultra-high baud rates, high modem
Over Any Network SNR, and innovative features including
LC-PCS, Nyquist subcarriers, DBA, and
800G-Generation Optical Engines Leveraging Advanced SD-FEC gain sharing
DSP and PIC Technology
■ Increase spectral efficiency with
Infinera’s sixth-generation Infinite Capacity Engine (ICE6) is a single 1.6 Tb/s optical
minimized roll-off, super-channels,
engine that delivers two wavelengths at up to 800 Gb/s each. It leverages advanced a shared wavelocker, and a low
technology with a 7-nm CMOS process node digital ASIC/DSP, a highly integrated overhead Ethernet framing mode,
indium phosphide (InP) photonic integrated circuit (PIC), high-performance analog enabling up to 42.4 Tb/s in the C-band
and over 80 Tb/s with C+L
electronics, and advanced packaging. ICE6 benefits from holistic co-design, with all
the components and packaging designed in-house. This enables high modem signal- ■ Optimize performance under
to-noise ratio (SNR), minimizing the noise and distortions inside the optical engine, challenging conditions with over 200
which is a key enabler for 800 Gb/s performance. ICE6 is ideal for a wide range of baud rate/modulation combinations,
specialized subsea modulations, high
optical transport applications, including data center interconnect, high-capacity meshed transmit power, PDL mitigation, and
metros, long-haul, and submarine. ICE6 Turbo builds on the performance of ICE6, extreme lightning tolerance
increasing the maximum baud rate from 96 Gbaud to over 100 Gbaud, which extends
■ Deliver 400 GbE services cost
800 Gb/s wavelength reach by approximately 30%.
effectively with long-reach 800 Gb/s,
ultra-long-reach 400 Gb/s, and the
20% 33%
ability to transmit three 400 GbE
clients over two 600 Gb/s waves with
bandwidth virtualization

■ Reduce operational costs with low

Ultra-high Long-codeword Submarine High-gain Baud/Mod power consumption and footprint,
Baud Rates PCS Modulations SD-FEC Flexibility
fully flexible client-to-line mapping,
and a smaller number of high-capacity
wavelengths to provision and manage

Nyquist Dynamic Bandwidth Super-Gaussian Encryption Bandwidth

Subcarriers Allocation Virtualization

Gain Sharing

C L
Noise
1529 1567 1569 1610
λ Locker

Shared SD-FEC High Modem C+L-band Fully Flexible

Wavelocker Gain Sharing SNR Mapping

Figure 1: Key ICE6 and ICE6 Turbo features

Leverage a Wide Range of Innovative Features

Having pioneered the use of Nyquist subcarriers with ICE4, ICE6 doubles the number
of subcarriers per wavelength to eight, enabling ICE6 to reduce the effect of chromatic
dispersion compared to single-carrier wavelengths by a factor of 64 due to the squared
relationship between baud rate and chromatic dispersion. Probabilistic constellation
shaping (PCS) provides benefits in terms of almost unlimited modulation granularity
and improved optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) tolerance, with Infinera’s unique
long-codeword PCS implementation (LC-PCS) bringing PCS gain close to its theoretical
maximum.
Another unique Infinera innovation, dynamic bandwidth allocation (DBA), brings Nyquist subcarriers and LC-PCS together with the ability to
decrease the data rate of the outer subcarriers, which may suffer higher penalties due to effects such as filter narrowing, while increasing
the data rate of the inner subcarriers in order to maximize capacity-reach. ICE6’s dual-wavelength ASIC/DSP enables an additional unique
feature, SD-FEC gain sharing, where the errors of a more-challenged wavelength are shared with a less-challenged wavelength to equalize
the FEC gain, thus maximizing the capacity of the more challenged wavelength. Additional advanced features include comprehensive
telemetry, wire-speed encryption, and bandwidth virtualization over the two wavelengths (e.g., three 400 GbE clients over two 600 Gb/s
wavelengths or five 100 GbE clients over two 250 Gb/s wavelengths).

Maximize Wavelength Capacity-reach with Ultra-high Baud Rates

Higher baud rates enable significantly increased wavelength capacity-reach, and therefore provide a key lever for reducing the cost per
bit, power, and footprint of coherent optical transport. With a maximum baud rate of 96 Gbaud, ICE6 already delivers industry-leading
reach over a wide range of wavelength speeds, including 800 Gb/s wavelengths to 800+ km, 600 Gb/s wavelengths to 2,500+ km,
400 Gb/s wavelengths to 6,500+ km, and submarine reach of over 16,000 km. Targeted at ultra-high-baud-rate applications, ICE6 Turbo
extends 800 Gb/s reach to 1,000+ km, 600 Gb/s reach to 3,000+ km and 400 Gb/s reach to 7,500+ km. Furthermore, ICE6’s flexible baud
rate (31-96 Gbaud), with over 200 combinations of baud rate and bits per symbol currently supported, enables use cases for sub-maximum
baud rates, such as maximum 800 Gb/s spectral efficiency, transport over fixed-grid networks, trans-oceanic subsea, and operationally
simple flexible grid based on 100 GHz channels.

Increase Spectral Efficiency and Fiber Capacity

Spectral efficiency is determined by the number of raw bits per symbol, overhead efficiency, and spectral waste. ICE6 maximizes the
number of raw bits per symbol with features including 64QAM, long-codeword PCS, Nyquist subcarriers, DBA, and high modem SNR. High-
gain SD-FEC and a low overhead Ethernet framing mode ensure overhead efficiency. Minimized roll-off enabled by Nyquist shaping, super-
channel support, and a shared wavelocker enable wavelengths to be packed close together, minimizing spectral waste. Together these
features enable up to 8.833 bits/s/Hz and total C-band capacity of up to 42.4 Tb/s, with L-band versions of ICE6 and ICE6 Turbo enabling
more than 80 Tb/s per fiber pair (C+L).

Optimize Performance Under Challenging Optical Conditions

With over 400 line modes supported plus multiple additional configurable parameters, ICE6 can also maximize performance even under
challenging conditions. Nyquist shaping and DBA enable high ROADM cascadeability, with wavelengths able to traverse 20+ ROADMs.
High transmit power (up to +9 dBm) enables compatibility with the widest range of optical line systems. Digital polarization control on
transmit mitigates polarization-dependent loss (PDL) in older fibers. High state-of-polarization (SOP) rotation tolerance (up to 6+ Mrad/s)
provides extreme lightning tolerance for aerial fibers. ICE6 has even delivered 800 Gb/s over 667 km of G.655 LEAF fiber, where low
chromatic dispersion makes coherent performance a lot more challenging. For submarine networks, ICE6 leverages a super-Gaussian PCS
distribution to maximize performance over dispersion-uncompensated large effective area fibers that typically operate at high wavelength
power levels. For legacy dispersion-managed submarine cables, specialized 4D/8D multi-dimensional modulation formats and a 33% FEC
option are supported.

Reduce OpEx Related to Power, Footprint, Provisioning, and Management

ICE6 enables platform power consumption of less than 0.2 W/Gb/s and can deliver up to 6.4 Tb/s of coherent bandwidth in 3RU with
CHM6 sleds in the GX G42 compact modular platform. Its extended reach further avoids the space and power of intermediate electrical
regeneration. Operational costs are also reduced by the fully flexible client-to-line mapping on the CHM6 sleds, and with a smaller number
of higher-capacity wavelengths to provision and manage, as opposed to a larger number of lower-capacity wavelengths.

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Statements herein may contain projections regarding future products, features, or technology and resulting commercial or technical
benefits, which are subject to risk and may or may not occur. This publication is subject to change without notice and does not
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specifications or warranties. 0306-TN-RevA-0822