Alcatel, France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom Set Optical Record

Working under the framework of the TOPRATE European research project, Alcatel, France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom completed a successful field trial of terabit transmission capability over an existing fiber link. The goal of the research project is to investigate advanced ultra-high channel bit rate transmission technologies (170 Gbps or more per channel) and to demonstrate Terabit per second (1 000 Gigabits per second) network transmission capacity over installed fiber infrastructure.



The trial resulted in a point-to-point DWDM transmission of 1.28 Tbps over a 430 km standard (ITU-T G.652) single mode fiber link in France Telecom's network in the Marseille area. Test results were achieved using eight densely packed optical transmission channels, each carrying a record bit rate of 170 Gbps (160 Gbps plus an overhead so as to allow bit error detection and correction). The channel bit rate is 16 times higher than standard 10 Gbps DWDM channels. http://www.alcatel.comhttp://dbs.cordis.lu