Optical transport systems vendor Coriant has had its transmission of 57.6 Tbps (and a gross rate of 73.7 Tbps) over hollow core optical fiber certified by Guinness World Records as, in fact, a world record. Coriant detailed the feat in a post-deadline paper at OFC 2014 in San Francisco this past March.
The optical transmission demonstration paired hollow core fiber with space-division multiplexing (SDM), two technologies now under extensive research as a path toward avoiding hitting the Shannon limit that caps how much bandwidth conventional fibers can transmit using current techniques (see, for example, the video "Space-division Multiplexing at OFC 2014"). Hollow core photonic band gap fibers promise lower attenuation, virtually no nonlinear distortions, and a much higher optical amplification bandwidth than current conventional fibers, as well as low latency, Coriant says. Hollow core fiber could lower latency by as much as 30% versus conventional fibers, the company says.
Coriant has worked with both technologies for some time, including as part of the MODE-GAP effort. The company recently demonstrated 400-Gbps optical transmission using SDM on a network owned by Telekom Austria’s T1 (see "Telekom Austria's A1, Coriant run 400 Gbps via space-division multiplexing"). It also demonstrated a similar data rate over standard multimode fiber using SDM as part of the MODE-GAP program when the company was still part of Nokia Siemens Networks (see "Nokia Siemens Networks touts 57.6 Tbps over multimode fiber").
"Coriant is proud to have Guinness World Records recognize our achievement in the highest data transmission rate over hollow core optical fiber, which was 50 times the previous record," said Ken Craft, executive vice president, Optical Products and Technology at Coriant. "This achievement represents further proof that we are on the right path driving this research, keeping our finger on the pulse of cutting-edge innovations."
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