Verizon, NEC tout high-speed optical network trials

In a post-deadline paper delivered at last month’s OFC/NFOEC in Los Angeles, Verizon (NYSE, NASDAQ:VZ) and NEC Corp. of America described a field trial of multi-rate high-speed optical transmission. The trial saw 100-Gbps, 450-Gbps, and 1-Tbps wavelengths transmitted simultaneously over a single fiber in Verizon’s Dallas-area fiber-optic network. The transmission covered a total of 3,560-km (2,212 miles) over 45 fiber spans of 79.1 km each.

The paper, entitled “Field Experiment with Mixed Line-Rate Transmission (112-Gb/s, 450-Gb/s, and 1.15 Tb/s) over 3,560 km of Installed Fiber Using Filterless Coherent Receiver and EDFAs Only,” the 100-Gbps, 450-Gbps, and 1-Tbps wavelengths leveraged dual-polarization quadrature phase-shift keying (DP-QPSK). The researchers also used all-optical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) to create “optical superchannels” for the 450-Gbps and 1.1-Tbps transmissions.

The Verizon and NEC researchers created a separate 1.1-Tbps signal using DP-16QAM modulation and transmitted it over four spans (316 km) of installed fiber as well.

The fact that the superchannels performed successfully over a field network, rather than in a laboratory environment, was a significant finding, the researchers asserted.

"As we look to a future when data rates go beyond 100G, it's important to begin examining how these technologies perform," said Glenn Wellbrock, director of optical transport network architecture and design at Verizon, and an author of the paper. "This trial gives us a good first step toward analyzing the capabilities of future technologies."

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