Alcatel-Lucent claims record for optical transmission

Alcatel-Lucent on Wednesday announced that combined research teams from the United States and France successfully transmitted 25.6 Tb/s of optical data over a single fibre strand.

The company is claiming a world record for the achievement which is approximate to sending 600 DVDs over the net, every second.According to a statement, the feat was accomplished using 160 Wavelength-Division Multiplexed (WDM) channels.

These results surpass the previous transmission record of 14 Tb/s, established in September 2006.

Scientists from the National Institute of Information and Communications Technologies in Tokyo (NTIICT), and also from Sumitomo Osaka Cement in Chiba, Japan, were involved in the experiment.

“Optical networking is a critical enabler of the broadband IP revolution we are seeing throughout the world today,” said Romano Valussi, president of Alcatel-Lucent’s optics activities. “The experience we are developing in these tests will help Alcatel-Lucent design the most efficient, highest bandwidth systems possible to benefit our customers when networks of this bandwidth will be deployed.”

The experimental system transmitted 25.6Tbit/s of data through three 80-km spans. The data used wavelength division multiplexing in both the C(conventional) and L(long) wavelength bands and, to double the total capacity, polarization multiplexing in each wavelength was employed.

Distributed Raman amplification was used to increase the received optical signal-to-noise ratio and to allow the use of a single dispersion-compensating fibre for both bands after each span.

Maximizing spectral efficiency, which is the amount of information that can be transmitted within a unit bandwidth, was also “critical” the company said.