Infinera today announced its first point-to-point coherent subcarrier aggregation technology its calling XR optics. The transportation methodology aims to simplify metro networks, reduce capital expenditures, and address the rapidly growing demand for 5G-driven bandwidth.

"One of the things we noticed as we started shifting our focus a little bit more toward the metro edge and the end-user services is this mismatch between the technology and the actual traffic flow," Robert Shore, SVP of marketing at Infinera, told SDxCentral.

He explained that in a traditional hub-and-spoke traffic pattern, information is transported from the edge to an electrical aggregation point, an approach that requires matching transceivers at either end of the connection. Infinera's approach is to aggregate the signals into a single high-bandwidth connection before continuing onto the hub.

"The mismatch in optical technology has always been symmetrical. On either end of the fiber I need to put a transceiver ... that is the same size," Shore said. "What we decided to do is use some of our technology that we've been evolving over the years and develop a single laser that can actually subdivide the output from that laser into subcarriers."

The technology effectively cuts the number of transceivers required in half and can even replace the expensive intermediate aggregator hardware with a relatively cheap passive optical aggregator.

"By doing that optically we can ... potentially eliminate the entire need for that middle router altogether," Shore said. "Its literally just an optical splitter. Signal comes in and it splits it 16 ways."

The benefits extend far beyond eliminating hardware. Infinera says that by simplifying the network, XR optics enables service providers to more rapidly increase the bandwidth at the edge without having to roll trucks and rip and replace hardware.

In theory, the technology could enable dynamic reallocation of bandwidth simply by directing more subcarriers to an edge location.

The key driver behind this technology was bandwidth, explained Shore. "We're focusing on this now because of some of the emerging end-user services that are starting to come out like 5G. They're really just exploding the bandwidth at the edge of the network," he said.

While Infinera developed the technology, it doesn't plan to sell it directly. Instead the company intends to license the technology to a series of yet to be announced hardware partners over the next few months.