NEC, Corning claim petabit transmission over a single optical fiber

NEC Corporation of America and optical fiber provider Corning Inc. (NYSE:GLW) claim to have achieved a new record for the transmission capacity over optical fibers. Researchers from NEC Labs in Princeton, NJ, and from Corning’s Sullivan Park Research Center in Corning, NY, have successfully demonstrated ultra-high speed transmission with a capacity of 1.05 Pbps (10¹⁵ bits per second) over novel multi-core fiber (MCF) that contains 12 single-mode and two few-mode cores. The transmission employed a space-division multiplexing (SDM) scheme and optical multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) signal processing technique.

Designed by Corning researchers, the fiber has cores arranged in a triangular lattice, which enables transmission over a large number of spatial modes. By combining spectral multiplexing with polarization and spatial mode multiplexing and employing multilevel modulation formats, NEC researchers achieved a total spectral efficiency of 109 bits/sec/Hz. The aggregate transmission capacity of 1.050 Pbps is the highest capacity over a single optical fiber reported so far, the researchers claim.

“This achievement is a continuation of NEC’s leadership in ultra-high optical transmission systems. We recently demonstrated the highest capacity over singlemode optical fibers, and now we have opened new frontiers with the highest transmission capacity over any type of optical fibers,” said Dr. Ting Wang, head of optical networking research at NEC Laboratories America. “We are proud to lead industry efforts with Corning and to provide solutions that will be the foundation of the next generation of networking.”

"As the foundation of telecommunications networks, optical fiber innovation enables carriers to cost-effectively keep up with ever-growing traffic demands," said Cynthia B. Giroux, division vice president and research director, Corning. “This new advance in optical fibers with 14 transmission cores is a continuation of Corning’s longstanding leadership in optical fiber innovation."

The research was originally reported at the 2012 Frontiers in Optics/Laser Science XXVIII (FiO/LS) meeting in Rochester, NY, last October.

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