By C. David Chaffee, Chaffee Fiber Optics

Two Japanese groups demonstrated Thursday night at the OFC/NFOEC 2011 postdeadline paper sessions that they can send more than 100 terabits per second (Tbps) through one hair-thin optical fiber.

Qian et al. from NEC Laboratories America reached 101.7 Tbps over standard single-mode fiber using pilot-based phase noise mitigation. The team sent 370 wavelengths each with data rates of 294 Gbps over 165 km of standard single-mode fiber to achieve the results. The team said it achieved spectral efficiency of 11 bits/s/Hz, which it considered the highest reported spectral efficiency to date for wavelength-division multiplexing transmission.

A separate team, Sakaguchi et al. from Sumitomo Electric Industries in Japan, demonstrated 109 Tbps using spatial division multiplexed signals over a seven-core fiber. The Sumitomo group sent 97 colors through each of the cores at data rates of 172 Gbps (two 86 Gbps QPSK signals). The team sent the data over 16.8 km of fiber.

The 34 postdeadline papers came from a variety of sources, including Oracle Labs, IBM, NEC Labs America, Hewlett-Packard, ZTE, the University of Southampton, the Technical University of Denmark, the Heinrich Hertz Institute, Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, AT&T Labs, TE Subcom, Sumitomo Electric Industries, the University of Melbourne, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, the University of California-San Diego, the Technical University of Berlin, Infinera, Alcatel-Lucent, the Technical University of Carolo-Wilhelmina zu Braunschweig, Nokia-Siemens Networks and NTT Photonics Labs.  

C. David Chaffee (cdcfiber@aol.com) owns Chaffee Fiber Optics, a Baltimore-based firm that specializes in analyzing developments in fiber optics and publishing on the state of the industry.

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