M-net has conducted field trials of the super coherent capabilities of Nokia’s Photonic Service Engine 3 (PSE-3) coherent ASIC, the two companies say. The trial saw the use of probabilistic constellation shaping to support wavelengths of 500 Gbps.
Nokia unveiled the PSE-3 at OFC 2018 (see “Nokia touts ultimate in spectral efficiency via PSE-3 chipset and probabilistic constellation shaping”). The coherent transmission engine leverages probabilistic constellation shaping to enable the use of 64-QAM for a variety of transmission rates up to 600 Gbps. The shaping technique, developed by Nokia Bell Labs, varies the use of individual points within the 64-QAM constellation depending upon the characteristics of the fiber. The shaping optimizes the optical power for the fiber and application, enabling a more robust, spectrally efficient coherent transmission, Nokia says.
In the case of the M-net field trial, the collaborators used probabilistic constellation shaping to optimize the transmission to achieve 500 Gbps over parts of M-Net’s Bavarian DWDM network. "This field trial clearly underlines the innovative strength of M-net. We are very proud to collaborate with Nokia to push the technology envelope on our state-of-the-art fiber-optic network, and to be the first carrier to publicly test the PSE-3 and its probabilistic constellation shaping technology," said M-net CTO Dr. Hermann Rodler.
The field trial was the first for the PSE-3’s super coherent probabilistic constellation shaping (PCS) capabilities. "We're excited to partner with M-net on the implementation of its new fiber-optic backbone network,” said Sam Bucci, head of optical networking at Nokia. “The Technical University of Munich played a key role in the development of PCS, and the PSE-3 was largely developed at Nokia's R&D facility in Nuremberg, so it's only appropriate that the first field trial of PSE-3 technology would take place in Bavaria."
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