Being short for transmitter-receiver, transceiver is a device that both transmits and receives analog or digital signals. It is widely applied to wireless communication devices such as cellular telephones, cordless telephone sets, hand-held two-way radios, and mobile two-way radios in the past. Nowadays, transceivers are used in reference to transmitter/receiver devices in cable or optical fiber systems. In the market, there are 10G, 40G and 100G optical transceivers for enterprise and data center applications. Among them, 40G transceiver is one of the popular ones. This article will give a brief introduction to the three commonly used types of 40G transceivers, which are 40G QSFP+ transceiver, 40G CFP transceiver and 40G CXP transceiver.
- 40G QSFP+ Transceiver
As a new multi-source agreement (MSA) for high speed application (for example, 40G-BASE), QSFP+ provides four channels of data in one pluggable interface. Each channel is capable of transferring data at 10Gbps and supports a total of 40Gbps. The 40G QSFP+ transceiver combines the higher density attractions of parallel modules with some of the key advantages normally associated with SFP+ transceivers. It is designed to carry Infiniband and 40GBASE-SR4/40GBASE-LR4 applications. For example, the 40GBASE-LR4 transceiver, which is one of the 40G QSFP+ transceivers, is compliant to the IEEE 802.3ba (40GBASE-LR4) and supports OTU3 data rate.
- 40G CFP Transceiver
Designed after the SFP transceiver interface, the CFP transceiver is specified by a multi-source agreement (MSA) between competing manufacturers. As hot-swappable input/output devices that plug into a 40 Gigabit Ethernet CFP port of switch or router, 40G CFP transceivers offer customers versatile 40 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity options in core and distribution layers of data center, enterprise, and service provider networks. These transceivers can also support 100 Gigabit Ethernet.
- 40G CXP Transceiver
The CXP transceiver generally includes 12 transmit and 12 receive channels in its compact package. Therefore, it can provide twelve 10 Gbit/s links suitable for single 100 Gigabit Ethernet, three 40 Gigabit Ethernet channels, or twelve 10 Gigabit Ethernet channels. CXP transceivers are created to satisfy the high-density requirements of the data center, targeting parallel interconnections.
As an essential part in 40 Gigabit Ethernet, 40G transceivers are developed quickly and used widely. Generally, QSFP+ transceivers have a transfer rate of 40 Gbps, CFP transceivers have a transfer rate of 40 Gbps or 100 Gbps, while CXP transceivers are dedicated usually for 100G transmission and have a transfer rate of 100 Gbps. Fiberstore supplies many kinds of 40G transceivers and also manufactures customized 40G transceivers for its customers.
