Japan's NTT claims to have made a breakthrough that could herald a new era in high-capacity backbone networking.
Using multicore fibre cables and massive MIMO signal processing, it has achieved stable signal transmission at rates of up to 455 Tbps in a field test that simulated environmental effects such as wind, rain and civil works – all of which can affect signal propagation.
NTT explained that in traditional optical network architecture, data flows down a single core, but efforts are underway to see how multiple cores can be used to transmit signals in parallel, increasing the number of channels and by extension, capacity – all the while maintaining the same 0.125 mm diameter as existing optical fibre.
NTT says it was able to couple 12 fibre cores, employing digital signal processing at the receiver end to overcome the issue of interference from adjacent cores.
