Nokia Siemens Networks, and a consortium of R&D partners, announced a record optical transmission capacity of 57.6 terabit per second (Tbps) using multimode fiber. The demonstration employed spatial multiplexing over solid-core multi-mode fiber.
Members of the ModeGap consortium include Nokia Siemens Networks, the University of Southampton and the Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, among others, The project was partially funded by the European Union under its seventh framework program.
The partners have presented the work to the European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC).
“With this record data rate we can transmit, over a single fiber, double the capacity required for 7 billion people – the world’s population – to be connected over simultaneous phone calls,” said Robert Richter, head of R&D optical networks at Nokia Siemens Networks. “But this is only the beginning. By 2020, we will be able to support 100 times this capacity, which means that a single fiber would have enough capacity to deliver 40 million different TV streams – for example one for every household in Germany – simultaneously.”
