OIF 400ZR Interoperability Performance Evaluation

This white paper presents the performance evaluation of 400ZR and OpenZR+ pluggable modules within a multi-vendor interoperability environment, conducted during the OIF OFC 2023, ECOC 2023, and OFC 2024 Plugfests. The focus of the evaluation was on the required optical signal to noise ratio (rOSNR) necessary for maintaining a post-forward error correction (FEC) error-free link over a dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) optical line system (OLS). A total of 10 different QSFP-DD optical pluggable modules from various vendors were tested using Anritsu's 400G transport tester and other optical measurement equipment. The results indicated that the interoperability and performance of these modules provide confidence to network operators in deploying multi-vendor ZR environments, ensuring high channel density and efficiency. The paper details the test setup, procedures, and results, including the rOSNR measurements for different transceiver combinations, which demonstrated that most configurations met the OIF-400ZR IA Rx OSNR requirement.