Semiconductor developer Lantiq is claiming a VDSL2 breakthrough with its announcement today that it has begun shipping a system-level vectoring solution capable of supporting speeds of up to 100 Mbps. Some other companies, including Alcatel-Lucent, have announced vectoring products that say they can support 100 Mbps speeds. But according to Lantiq, its offering is the first system-level solution and only a system-level solution can more than double data rates and reach.
We first began to hear about vectoring a year or two ago, after some promising lab trials, including one conducted by Ericsson that attained speeds of 500 Mbps over six bonded copper pairs. The idea of bonding copper pairs together has been around for quite some time, but there are limits to what can be achieved because when copper pairs are bonded together, cross-talk is generated, creating transmission problems. Vectoring, defined in an International Telecommunications Union standard, addresses those cross-talk problems, enabling the copper pairs to support higher bandwidths.
In today’s announcement, Lantiq senior vice president and general manager Martin Schenk called the company’s new offering “the industry’s first VDSL2 vectoring chip for system-level cross-talk noise cancellation for up to 384 ports.” The offering, Schenk said, “provides the most scalable and best performing solution to allow service providers to capitalize on the potential of their copper access networks.”
According to Lee Ratliff, principal analyst for HIS iSuppli Corporation, system-level VDSL2 vectoring enables an entire binder to be vectored for the greatest benefit.
Lantiq’s name for the new system-level chip is the VINAX IVE1000 System-Level Vectoring Engine. The company said the chip also reduces power requirements by as much as 20% in comparison with a non-vectored system as a result of optimcal balancing of transmission power.
According to today’s announcement, service providers can install Lantiq’s VINAX V3 “vectoring ready” VDSL2 line cards today, requiring only a remote software upgrade when the VINAX IVE1000-based central vectoring card is added at the central office or in a local cabinet.
“Connected to a vectoring standard-compliant CPE device such as the Lantiq XWAY VRX200, this combination allows the implementation of a complete end-to-end vectoring solution,” said Lantiq.
The VINAX IVE1000 is “sampling” now, Lantiq said.
