The development of optical transceiver modules

Optical transceiver modules have many form-factors such as 1x9, GBIC, SFF, SFP, XFP, XENPAK, X2 and SFP+.

The 1x9 module is the earliest optical transceiver module, adopting the SC connector, usually welded on circuit boards. Then the form-factor of 1x9 gradually marches into the direction toward small size and hot-pluggable characteristics.

The development of optical transceiver modules can be divided into two directions. First, it is hot-pluggable as GBIC. Second, it is small in size and directly solidified into circuit board with LC, thus becoming SFF 2x5, or SFF 2x10. Both GBIC and SFF modules had been widely-used.

GBIC had been widely used in switches and routers and other internet devices.

SFF is another branch of their upgrading versions, now having been widely-used in the system of EPON.

SFP possesses the characteristics of being hot-pluggable of GBIC and of being small in size of SFF. It is applied with LC and its volume is only 1/2 or 1/3 of GBIC’s. Because of its increasing density in ports of internet equipment and its catering to the momentum of internet development, it is widely-used in practice.

Nowadays, 10G optical transceiver modules mostly have such types as Xenpak、X2、XFP and SFP+.

Xenpak is another progress in terms of the up-gradation of optical transceiver modules. Compared with those featuring non-hot-pluggable modules, it gains more popularity but fails to meet the needs of the market in some aspects.

X2 is the upgrading version of Xenpak, similar in their internal functions, supporting synchronizing optical fibers of 10Gbe and OC192 and other standards as 10GFC.

XFP can replace of XENPAK. It is smaller than XENPAK and its power consumption is also lower than XENPAK.

The size of SFP+ module is even smaller than XFP’s, and its cost is lower than XFP, X2 and XENPAK’s.

Now, optical transceiver modules move towards being small in size, low expenditure, high data rate and being hot-pluggable.

 Tags: optical transceiver modules, SFP modules, SFP+ modules, XFP optical transceivers