According to CIR (CommunicationsIndustryResearchers) latest report, "2015 Active Optical Cable Market: data centers and high-performance computing market," in 2020 for the data center of the active optical cable (AOC) market will reach $ 4.2 billion.

Active optical network central office equipment (CE) and remote equipment (RE) connected via active optical transmission equipment. Transmission technology is the backbone network SDH and PDH technologies have been widely adopted, but the main SDH technology. Remote device mainly to complete the collection business, interface adapter, multiplexing and transmission. Central office equipment mainly to complete the interface adapter, multiplexing and transmission. In addition, the central office equipment to the network element management system also provides network management interface. In the actual construction of the access network, active optical network topology is typically star or ring. Active optical network technology has the following characteristics:

AON (Active Optical Network) is a signal during transmission, the transmission network from the central office equipment to the use of the photoelectric conversion devices, active optoelectronic devices and fiber optic transmission equipment and other active optical fiber between user allocation unit. Active optical device comprises a light source (laser), optical receivers, optical transceivers, optical amplifiers (fiber amplifiers and semiconductor optical amplifiers).

Fiber access refers to the complete optical fiber as a transmission medium between the central office and the users. Fiber access can be divided into active and passive optical access. Main fiber optic network is lightwave transmission technology. Development of optical transmission multiplexing quite rapidly, most have been in practical use.

QSFP is from a simple single-mode fiber SONET applications out into other multimode fiber applications, such as Gbps Ethernet, Fibre Channel, InfiniBand and so on. Many MSA members of the supply VCSEL chip, parallel VCSEL chips, pushing the QSFP technology in the field of multi-mode.