Press Release
March 10, 2011
NICT Achieved Highest Capacity of 109 Terabit Per Second Optical Fiber Transmission
- New multi-core fiber has exceeded the boundary of 100 Terabit per second and opened new paradigm of spatial division multiplexing toward thousand times capacity -
- New multi-core fiber has exceeded the boundary of 100 Terabit per second and opened new paradigm of spatial division multiplexing toward thousand times capacity -
National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (hereinafter NICT, President: Dr. Hideo Miyahara) succeeded in transmission experiment of 109 Terabit per second (Tbit/s) optical signal by using a new class of optical fiber in collaboration with OPTOQUEST Co., Ltd. (hereinafter OQ, President: Noboru Higashi) and Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd. (hereinafter SEI, President and CEO: Masayoshi Matsumoto).
This world record substantially exceeded previous reported 69.1 Tbit/s, and simultaneously defied the boundary of 100 Tbit/s per single fiber. Further, a combination of this technology with other optical transmission techniques was expected to increase the optical transmission capacity by thousand times than current fiber communications.
NICT has started R&D commission of "Innovative optical fiber technologies" from FY2010 as well, which was promoting cooperation among government, industry and academia in order to establish new class of optical fiber communications infrastructures.
This world record substantially exceeded previous reported 69.1 Tbit/s, and simultaneously defied the boundary of 100 Tbit/s per single fiber. Further, a combination of this technology with other optical transmission techniques was expected to increase the optical transmission capacity by thousand times than current fiber communications.
NICT has started R&D commission of "Innovative optical fiber technologies" from FY2010 as well, which was promoting cooperation among government, industry and academia in order to establish new class of optical fiber communications infrastructures.
[Background]
Current optical fiber communications system accommodates various optical signals into a narrow light path (core) of fiber as shown in Fig. 1.
Optical power is confined within 9µm diameter of core and density of energy can reach as high as solar surface.
Excess power injection will cause signal distortion resulting in bit error, or fiber fuse, hence there is a physical limitation of capacity (Fig. 2).
Increase of technological transmission capacity per fiber was considered as slowing down asymptotically to 100 Tbit/s from 2001 because of such power limitation (Fig. 3).,
From the early stage of the current standard fiber development, the probability of multi-core fiber (MCF)(Fig.1) multiple cores within single fiber has been discussed.
However, because of technical issues such as inter-core crosstalk and difficulty of splicing, MCF has not been developed fully.
[New Achievements]
NICT and partners solved several issues of 7-cores MCF and achieved fair signal qualities for all cores in 109 Tbit/s 16.8-km transmission experiment. NICT used, MCF coupling device fabricated by OQ which can connect all 7-cores to other seven conventional fibers with tiny loss, and 7-cores MCF developed by SEI whose inter-core crosstalk was drastically improved, in order to make success this experiment (See Fig. 4).
This experiment shows potency of MCF by establishing world record capacity of 109 Tbit/s by utilizing of multi-core technologies, meanwhile it overcame predicted boundary of 100 Tbit/s per single fiber. Further transmission capacity is achievable by means of MCF relating technologies. Moreover, a combination of MCF with other technologies for high capacity transmission, thousand times of current capacity can be expected (Fig. 5).
This experiment shows potency of MCF by establishing world record capacity of 109 Tbit/s by utilizing of multi-core technologies, meanwhile it overcame predicted boundary of 100 Tbit/s per single fiber. Further transmission capacity is achievable by means of MCF relating technologies. Moreover, a combination of MCF with other technologies for high capacity transmission, thousand times of current capacity can be expected (Fig. 5).
[Future Plans]
NICT will promote cooperation among government, industry and academia in order to realize increase of core numbers of MCF and commercialize. These results were presented on March 10th in post deadline session of Optical Fiber Communications Conference (OFC/NFOEC 2011, March 6th ~ 10th) held in Los Angeles. U.S.A.
< Media Contact >
Sachiko HIROTA
Public Relations Office
Strategic Planning Department
Tel：+81-42-327-6923
Sachiko HIROTA
Public Relations Office
Strategic Planning Department
Tel：+81-42-327-6923
< Technical Contact >
Yoshinari AWAJI, Naoya WADA
Photonic Network Group
New Generation Network Research Center
Tel：+81-42-327-6853
Yoshinari AWAJI, Naoya WADA
Photonic Network Group
New Generation Network Research Center
Tel：+81-42-327-6853
< Terminology and Interpretations >
Tera bit:
1 Tera (T) bit means 1 trillion bit, 1 Giga (G) bit means 1 billion bit, 1 Mega (M) bit means 1 million bit.
Current FTTH service has maximum capacity of 1Gbit/s and 100 Tbit/s is 100 thousand times of it.
1 Tera (T) bit means 1 trillion bit, 1 Giga (G) bit means 1 billion bit, 1 Mega (M) bit means 1 million bit.
Current FTTH service has maximum capacity of 1Gbit/s and 100 Tbit/s is 100 thousand times of it.
µm (Micro-meter):
1 µm is 0.001 milli-meter.
1 µm is 0.001 milli-meter.
Supplementary Information
Fig. 1: Current standard optical fiber and Multi Core Fiber
Conceptual cross-section of current standard fiber and multi-core fiber. Yellow circle represents optical path (core).
Fig. 2: The limit of power injection
Increase of injected optical power into core causes nonlinear distortion or fiber fuse, hence capacity will be limited.
Fig. 3: Process of transmission capacity per fiber
Fig. 4: Experimental outline
A part of optical phase modulators was the result of NICT's R&D commission.
Fig. 5: Image of transmission by multi-core fiber