At ECOC 2026, TeraSignal unveiled a new architecture called AWP (Analog Wave Processor), designed to bring advanced signal processing to 200G-per-lane AI interconnects used in 1.6T and 3.2T infrastructure. What sets it apart is that it processes electrical waveforms directly in the analog domain performing weighting, delay, and accumulation on the broadband signal itself rather than first converting signals to digital samples the way conventional DSPs or analog equalizers do. The company says this lets it add sophisticated correction capabilities without sacrificing the low power and low latency that make linear interconnects attractive in the first place.
CEO Armond Hairapetian explained the pairing of technologies this way: their existing TSLink system diagnoses problems in the link, while AWP now supplies the means to fix them together delivering DSP-like intelligence without the power and latency costs a traditional DSP would add.
On the technical side, TeraSignal says AWP offers several capabilities suited to 200G/lane and future speeds: high-bandwidth wave processing with minimal power and delay, consistent amplitude and phase behavior across wide frequency ranges, equalization that extends past the Nyquist frequency to handle high-frequency distortions, wave-domain feed-forward equalization to correct inter-symbol interference, and techniques to reduce signal reflections through weighted, delayed waveform handling.
Combined with TSLink which handles measurement of link and channel conditions — AWP forms what the company describes as a closed-loop system (using OIF's CMIS-LT protocol) that boosts margin and robustness while pushing the reach of DSP-free linear connections further.
This technology is built into TeraSignal's new Lotus product family for 200G-per-lane applications, spanning three chips: the TS5802 copper redriver, TS8802 linear MZM driver, and TS9802 linear TIA. Together with TSLink, these form a unified architecture usable across both copper and optical interconnects, covering ACC, LPO, NPO, and CPO use cases.
TeraSignal plans to showcase both AWP and TSLink at ECOC 2026 in Málaga, Spain (September 21–23), at booth 1336, with additional multi-vendor demos at the OIF booth (2126).
