Nokia hits record single carrier bit rate of 1.52 Tbps over 80 km

Researchers at Nokia Bell Labs achieved a world record for the highest single carrier bit rate at 1.52 Terabits per second (Tbps) over 80 km of standard single mode fiber.

Marcus Weldon, Nokia CTO and President of Nokia Bell Labs, said: “It has been fifty years since the inventions of the low-loss fiber and the associated optics. From the original 45 Megabit-per-second systems to more than 1 Terabit-per-second systems of today – a more than 20,000-fold increase in 40 years – to create the fundamental underpinning of the internet and the digital societies as we know it. The role of Nokia Bell Labs has always been to push the envelope and redefine the limits of what’s possible. Our latest world records in optical research are yet another proof point that we are inventing even faster and more robust networks that will underpin the next industrial revolution.”

The Nokia Bell Labs optical research team, which was led by Fred Buchali, employed a new 128 Gigasample/second converter enabling the generation of signals at 128 Gbaud symbol rate and information rates of the individual symbols beyond 6.0 bits/symbol/polarization.  This accomplishment breaks the team’s own record of 1.3 Tbit/s set in September 2019 while supporting Nokia’s record-breaking field trial with Etisalat.

Several of these achievements were presented as part of Nokia Bell Labs’ post deadline research papers at the Optical Fiber Communications Conference & Exhibition (OFC) in San Diego.

Additionally, Nokia Bell Labs researcher Di Che was awarded the OFC Tingye Li Innovation Prize.

Recently, Di Che and team also set a new data-rate world record for directly modulated lasers (DML) by transmitting a 400 Gbps signal up to 15 km.

Nokia Bell Labs also highlighted the following significant achievements in optical communications:

The first field trial using spatial-division-multiplexed (SDM) cable over a 2,000km span of 4-core coupled-core fiber was achieved by researchers Roland Ryf and the SDM team. The experiments clearly show that coupled-core fibers are technically viable, offer high transmission performance, while maintaining an industry standard 125-um cladding diameter.
A research team led by Rene-Jean Essiambre, Roland Ryf and Murali Kodialam introduced a novel new set of modulation formats that provide improved linear and nonlinear transmission performance at submarine distances of 10,000 km. The proposed transmission formats are generated by a neuronal network and can significantly outperform traditional formats (QPSK) used in today’s submarine systems.
Researcher Junho Cho and team experimentally demonstrated capacity gains of 23% for submarine cable systems that operate under electrical supply power constraints. The capacity gains were achieved by optimizing the gain shaping filters using neural networks.
The researchers that achieved the world record and research results are part of Nokia Bell Labs’ Smart Optical Fabric & Devices Research Lab, which designs and builds the future of optical communications systems, pushing the state-of-the-art in physics, materials science, math, software and optics to create new networks that adapt to changing conditions and go far beyond today’s limitations.

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Google's Dunant transatlantic cable makes landfall in France

Google’s transatlantic Dunant cable has landed in Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez, in the Vendée region of France. The terrestrial stage of the laying of this cable is proceeding.

As the “Landing Party” and owner of the French part of the cable, Orange has completely refurbished the historic station in Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez, which was no longer in use, to house the terminal equipment for the Dunant system. This area is a strategic location, close to the main connectivity hubs on this side of the Atlantic. From this landing station, Orange is deploying terrestrial optical fibres in France between Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez and Paris to route its traffic on the Dunant cable to the capital's major Data Centres and will also provide service to the rest of Europe and major international Data Centres.

Orange will benefit from two pairs of optical fibres with a capacity of up to 30Tbps each.

"We are very pleased with the arrival of the Dunant cable in France. It is the concrete realization of a project in co-construction with Google that will enable us to respond to the explosion of Internet usage over the long term. This partnership strengthens Orange's role as a world leader in the investment, deployment, maintenance and operation of strategic infrastructures. The landing of Dunant on our shores once again places France at the heart of the global digital development," said Jean-Luc Vuillemin, Senior Vice President, International Networks and Services at Orange.

Orange and Telxius to backhaul Google's Dunant transatlantic cable

Tuesday, February 18, 2020  Google, Orange, Subsea, Telxius  

Orange and Telxius will provide terrestrial backhaul extensions in France and in the US for Google's Dunant submarine cable, which is expected to enter service in late 2020.

Under this agreement, Orange and Telxius offer co-location services at their respective Cable Landing Stations in Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez (France) and Virginia Beach (US).

From its Saint- Hilaire-de-Riez (85) Cable Landing Station, Orange will enable terrestrial connection to Telxius up to Paris, while Telxius will connect Orange to Ashburn from Virginia Beach.

This collaboration represents a strong transatlantic bridge as both companies can effectively provide multi- terabit capacity on this Europe-US route. It also reinforces Orange and Telxius’ respective positions to support the development of new digital usages for their international customers in Europe and America and bolsters the international leadership position of both companies on the wholesale market to better address the needs of content-providers and third-party operators.

“We are pleased to announce this agreement with Telxius, which will allow us to provide our customers with very high capacity end-to-end services, as well as network redundancy, on the strategic transatlantic route. We will be operating two fiber pairs of over 30 terabits per second between France and the USA. It is a valuable extension to Orange’s global network joining our Atlantic and Mediterranean routes to Africa, the Middle East and Asia with guaranteed best in class quality of service,” said Jerome Barré, CEO of Orange Wholesale and International Networks.

https://telxius.com/en/orange-and-telxius-are-teaming-up/

Google's Dunant cable leverages SDM for 250 Tbps capacity

Monday, April 08, 2019  Google, Subcom, Subsea  

Google's Dunant submarine cable system, which will link the U.S. and France, will be the first subsea cable to leverage space-division multiplexing (SDM), enabling 250 terabits per second capacity.

In a blog posting, Vijay Vusirikala, Director of Network Architecture and Optical Engineering at Google, says SDM will increase cable capacity in a cost-effective manner.

Dunant's design uses twelve fiber pairs and power-optimized repeaters. Whereas traditional subsea cables are powered from the shore end and rely on a dedicated set of pump lasers to amplify the optical signal for each fiber pair, SDM allows pump lasers and associated optical components to be shared among multiple fiber pairs.

https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/a-quick-hop-across-the-pond-supercharging-the-dunant-subsea-cable-with-sdm-technology

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Marvell samples dual 400GbE PHY

Marvell has begun sampling a dual 400GbE (Gigabit Ethernet) PHY transceiver with 100GbE serial electrical I/O capabilities. It enables interfacing between the current generation of switch ASICs with the next generation of optics and vice versa by supporting translation between 50G PAM4 and 100G PAM4 based implementations of 400GbE, 200GbE and 100GbE.

Marvell said its new dual 400GbE MACsec PHY (88X9121P) device with 100G serial I/Os enables the doubling of faceplate bandwidth on datacenter networks while reducing the total power consumption and cost per bit. The new device offers 256-bit MACsec encryption to ensure heightened point-to-point security, Class C compliant precision time protocol (PTP) timestamping for enhanced synchronization and Marvell’s  112G PAM4 SerDes technology for high-density 400GbE and 100GbE deployments.

The advent of 100G serial electrical signaling optical modules will allow 1:1 mapping between electrical and optical I/O speeds. This removes the additional circuitry inside 400GbE optical modules to convert from 50G electrical I/Os to 100G per lambda optical I/Os, reducing cost and power. As first to market with a PHY transceiver that has 100G serial I/Os, Marvell is placing itself at the forefront of this transitional process. The new PHY transceivers provide networking OEMs with the cutting-edge technology required for high-density dual 400G/octal 100G optical modules in QSFP-DD and OSFP form factors for cloud and data center applications.
The 88X9121P is both footprint- and software-compatible with the recently announced 88X7121P, providing a seamless upgrade path that facilitates migration to modules with 100GbE serial I/Os.

“We see the introduction of our feature-rich 100G serial I/O based, dual 400GbE PHYs playing a major role in the next evolutionary phase of the global data center and cloud sectors,” said Faraj Aalaei, executive vice president of the Networking Business Group at Marvell. “The transition to 100G serial signaling is critical for high-density optical interconnects required for next-generation switching solutions. Our newest PHY transceivers will help drive the industry transition to 100G serial I/O-based optics as data centers and cloud providers look to bring greater computing bandwidth and efficiency to their customers.”

https://www.marvell.com/company/newsroom/marvell-delivers-industry-s-first-dual-400gbe-phy-with-100g-serial-ios-and-macsec-security.html

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OFC 2020: 90% of technical presentations delivered

Despite travel restriction arising from the COVID-19 crisis, the organizers of this year's OFC 2020 Conference and Exhibition, which was held last week in San Diego, said
more than 90 percent of the event's 700+ technical presentations were delivered either in-person or by virtual presence. Through live-streaming and two-way remote participation, technical registrants unable to travel to San Diego remained an integral part of the event.

The new technologies and advancements that fueled this year’s conference will set the stage for the industry’s next breakthroughs in 5G, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, intra- and inter- data center equipment, disaggregation and more.

The OFC technical Program Chairs, Shinji Matsuo, NTT Device Technology Labs, NTT Corp., Japan; David Plant, McGill University, Canada; and Jun Shan Wey, ZTE TX, USA, worked tirelessly to ensure the OFC program remained accessible and collaborative for the broader community.

“OFC 2020 has demonstrated that large conferences can engage participants across the globe utilizing the optical fiber communications technologies developed by experts in the field,” said Wey, Plant and Matsuo. “The research and innovations enabled by the OFC community have made OFC 2020 the perfect opportunity to run a virtual conference experiment.”

“The travel restrictions that arose due to the Coronavirus created a new dynamic for this year’s event,” shared the Program Chairs. “But by partnering with OFC management, we were able to rise to the challenge and offer a way for continued global collaboration throughout the event.”

As in previous years, this year’s plenary session was live-streamed, providing important insights to the broader optical communications community from three respected technical and commercial leaders in the field. Professor Sir David Payne, director, Optoelectronics Research Centre, University of Southampton, UK explored the role of silica in the future of optical communications, emphasizing its potential and challenging the audience to think differently about ways to tackle technical hurdles.

“Let me get to answer my initial question, ‘Is there a future for silica?’ Silica is not all done by any means. It’s very hard to beat for optical components largely because it’s a very refractory material,” Payne concluded.

Dr. Qi Bi, president, China Telecom Technology Innovation Center, CTO, China Telecom Beijing Research Institute provided a lessons-learned overview of China Telecom’s 5G deployment. “The ever-growing data rate of 5G is expected to revolutionize the way that we live and do business,” Bi shared. “Vendors need to think how we can do an integrated approach instead of an independent approach so we can have a much better handle on system integration.”

A video of the plenary is posted here:
https://www.ofcconference.org/en-us/home/program-speakers/plenary-session/

Dr. Benno Willke, research group leader, Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics, Germany, rounded out the session with a visionary talk that discussed plans for a third-generation of gravitational-wave detector.

A commemorative event, “Celebrating 50 Years of Light-speed Connections,” was held this year to recognize the importance of bringing low-loss optical fiber and room-temperature semiconductor lasers together in 1970 to transform global communications and enable light-speed connections across continents and oceans. Special programming featured a keynote address by Dr. David Welch, founder and chief innovation officer of Infinera Corporation, Sunnyvale, California, U.S.A, whose talk gave a glimpse into the near-term future, a show-floor exhibit on the history of fiber optics and a reception.

“Optical networks are central to global connectivity and global communication, and it has absolutely transformed our society and our world,” Welch remarked. “In the end, life is about human-to-human activity. We may elect to utilize machines to facilitate better human-to-human connectivity, and I think that is the greatest contribution of the optical network: the expanse of our human-to-human connectivity.”

A video of the 50-year Commemorative Event is posted here:
https://events7.mediasite.com/Mediasite/Play/747ae78e651e4380989bcef3ed42146e1d

New this year, the Special Chairs’ Session, Vision 2030: Taking Optical Communications through the Next Decade, featured visionary speakers who discussed past successes alongside forthcoming innovations. With this year as the marker of a new decade, the session outlined projections for the next ten years in areas such as photonic integrated circuits, silicon/nanophotonics, photonic integrated circuits, evolution of undersea cables, and 5G optical transport, among other topics.

OFC 2021 will continue to serve as the industry’s premier optical communications event, which is set to take place 28 March - 1 April in San Francisco.

http://www.ofcconference.org

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