Nokia Bell Labs, Deutsche Telekom T-Labs and the Technical University of Munich achieved a 1 Terabit-per-second transmission rate over optical fiber.
The trial was possible due to a new modulation technique dubbed as Probabilistic Constellation Shaping (PCS) which uses quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) formats to achieve higher transmission capacity over a given channel to improve the spectral efficiency of optical communications. PCS provides greater flexibility and performance to enable optical networks to operate closer to the Shannon limit to meet growing consumer and business data demands. The Shannon Limit was discovered in 1948 by Claude Shannon, Bell Labs pioneer and the “father of information theory.”
PCS uses constellation points with high amplitude less frequently than those with lesser amplitude to transmit signals. This transmissions reach up to 30 percent further,
Marcus Weldon, president Nokia Bell Labs & Nokia CTO, said,
Future optical networks not only need to support orders of magnitude higher capacity, but also the ability to dynamically adapt to channel conditions and traffic demand. Probabilistic Constellation Shaping offers great benefits to service providers and enterprises by enabling optical networks to operate closer to the Shannon Limit to support massive datacenter interconnectivity and provide the flexibility and performance required for modern networking in the digital era.
Nokia Bell Labs will present the results of this joint experiment at the European Conference on Optical Communication (ECOC) 2016 in Düsseldorf, Germany on September 19.