800G, 400G & 100G Glossary
List of common terms and acronyms used in modern high-speed Ethernet and OTN links (Beyond 100G)
Common Terms
ACO - Analog Coherent Optics
AN - Auto Negotiation
ACC - Active Copper Cables
AEC - Active Electrical Cables
AOC - Active Optical Cables
ASIC - Application Specific Integrated Circuits
B100G - Beyond 100 Gbit/s
BCH - Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquengham FEC
C2C - Chip-to-Chip electrical interface
C2EO - Chip-to-Embedded Optics
C2F - Chip-to-Fabric electrical interface
C2M - Chip-to-Module electrical interface
C-CMIS - Coherent CMIS (QSFP-DD, OSFP)
CAUI - 100 Gigabit Attachment Unit Interface
CD - Chromatic Dispersion
CMIS - Common Management Interface Specification (QSFP-DD, OSFP)
COBO - Consortium of On-Board Optics alliance
CorFEC - Correctable/Corrected FEC error
CPO - Co-Packaged Optics
DAC - Direct Attach Copper Cables (passive)
DCI - Data Center Interconnect
DD - Double Density (transceiver-host interface)
DCN - Data Center Network
DCO - Digital Coherent Optics
DCO - Data Center Operation
DGD - Differential Group Delay (WDM)
DML - Directly Modulated Laser
DMT - Digital Multi-Tone
DP-QPSK - Dual Polarization Quadrature Phase Shift Keying
DR4 - Datacenter Reach (500 m), 4-Lane Optical Interface (SMF, MPO-12)
DSP - Digital Signal Processor
EML - Electro-absorption Modulated Laser
EoR - End-of-Rack architecture
ER - Extinction Ratio
ER4 - Extended Reach (40 km), CWDM4 Optical Interface (SMF, Duplex LC)
Expanded RS-FEC - Multi-lane KP4 FEC, RS(544, 514)
FEC - Forward Error Correction
FFE - Feed Forward Equalizer
FR4 - Far (medium) Reach (2 km), CWDM4 Optical Interface (SMF, Duplex LC)
GAUI - Gigabit Attachment Unit Interface
Gb/s - Gigabits per second, Gbps, Gbit/s
IA - Implementation Agreement
IMDD - Intensity Modulated Direct Detection transmission technology
ITLA - Integrable Tunable Laser Assembly
KP4-FEC - Standard Reed-Solom Forward Error Correction code, RS(544, 514)
KR4-FEC - Standard Reed-Solom Forward Error Correction code, RS(528, 514)
LL-FEC - Low Latency Reed-Solomon Forward Error Correction, RS(272, 257)
LPO - Linear-drive Pluggable Optics (transceiver)
LR4 - Long Reach (10 km), CWDM4 Optical Interface (SMF, Duplex LC)
LT - Link Training
MDI - Medium Dependent Interface
MLSE - Maximum Likelihood Sequence Estimation
MMF - Multi-Mode Fiber
MoR - Middle-of-Rack architecture
MPI - Multi-Path Interference (WDM)
MSA - Multi-Source Agreement
NCG - Net Coding Gain
NE - Network Equipment
NEM - Network Equipment Manufacturer
NPO - Near Package Optics
NRZ - Non-Return to Zero modulation
OBO - On-Board Optics
OIF - Optical Internetworking Forum (Consortium)
OM3 - Laser-optimized MMF fiber type
OM4 - Enhanced laser-optimized MMF fiber type
OM5 - Wideband MMF fiber (WBMMF) type, supports SWDM
OMA - Optical Modulation Amplitude
OSFP - Octal Small Form Factor Pluggable Transceiver
OTUCn - Nx100G OTN (Beyond OTU4)
PAM4 - Pulse Amplitude Modulation (4 levels)
PAM8 - Pulse Amplitude Modulation (8 levels)
PAPR - Peak-to-Average Power Ratio
PCS - Physical Coding Sublayer
PDP - Transmitter Dispersion Penalty
PHY - Physical Layer
PM-16PSK - Polarization-Multiplexed 16-Phase Shift Keying
PM-16QAM - Polarization-Multiplexed 16-ary Quadrature Amplitude Modulation
PM-16QAMPS - Polarization-Multiplexed 16-Phase Shift Keying
PM-QPSK - Polarization-Multiplexed Quadrature Phase-Shift Keying (Modulation)
PMA - Physical Medium Attachment
PMD - Physical Medium Dependent interface (Ethernet sublayer)
PMD - Polarization Mode Dispersion (form of optical pulse distortion)
post-FEC - Remaining errors present in payload after Forward error Correction (uncorrectable)
pre-FEC - All errors present in payload before applying Forward Error Correction
PSM8 - Parallel Single Mode interface with 8 SMF optical lanes
QAM - Quadrature Amplitude Modulation
QSFP - Quad Small Form Factor Pluggable Transceiver
ROSA - Receiver Optical Sub-Assembly
RS-FEC - Reed-Solomon Forward Error Correction, RS(528, 514)
SDO - Standards Developing Organizations (e.g., IEEE, OIF, ITU-T, etc.)
SECQ - Stressed Eye Closure Quaternary
SIHO - Soft-In Hard-Out Chase decoding algorithm
SiPh - Silicon Photonics
SMF - Single Mode Fiber
SR2 - Short Reach (100 m), 2-Lane Optical Interface (MMF, MPO-12)
SR4 - Short Reach (100 m), 4-Lane Optical Interface (MMF, MPO-12)
SR8 - Short Reach (100 m), 8-Lane Optical Interface (MMF, MPO-16)
Tb/s - Terabits per second, Tbps, Tbit/s
TDECQ - Transmitter Dispersion Eye Closure Quaternary
ToR - Top-of-Rack architecture
TOSA - Transmitter Optical Sub-Assembly
XDR4 - Extended Datacenter Reach (2 km), 4-Lane Optical Interface (SMF, MPO-12)
Z-FEC - Zipper Code FEC
ZR - Zero Dispersion Reach (>80 km), CWDM/Coherent Optical Interface (SMF, Duplex LC)