Joint European 100G R&D Field Trial (100GET) on Existing Optical Platform

Ericsson and Deutsche Telekom have successfully made a field trial of higher bandwidth optical transmission. Besides others, Ericsson and DT are engaged in the public funded R&D project 100GET, where this test took place. The new technology (delivered in this trial from the Marconi MHL 3000 WDM platform) will accommodate customer's steady growing broadband services in fixed and mobile broadband networks.

By augmenting capacities significantly on existing fiber networks, the optical transport system helps network operators to scale with incremental Capex and to reduce power consumption per bit and thereby the cost substantially.

Hans-Dieter Haag, member of CTO-organization within Deutsche Telekom's HQ said: "For today's and future transport networks, a flexible optical transport plane is an unquestioned necessity both regarding technical and commercial scaling. This leverages the value of our exiting fiber assets and helps us to cope with the bandwidth - revenue paradoxes. Further more, it is a key technology to support our efforts in corporate sustainability and power efficiency. Deutsche Telekom is actively contributing to the definition of various 100G standards. We are pleased to see the continuous scaling capabilities of already deployed equipment with mixed 10G & 40G traffic to be used even for the transmission of 100G channels."

For the demonstration, an existing link with mixed 10G and 40G traffic with a 50 GHz channel spacing was used. A line rate of 112 Gbit/s was achieved using polarization multiplexed RZ-DQPSK and a fast polarization tracker over 600 km standard SMF. The link included multiple ROADMs and unequally distributed amplifiers. With links optimized for distance, more than 1200 km optical path length is possible and have demonstrated in lab environments.

In the course of the running R&D project 100GET, DT and Ericsson will continue with field trials throughout 2009 and further cooperate closely with customers to determine the best modulation formats to ensure that the products fit future requirements.

DT and Ericsson continue to drive ongoing industry research and standardization on high-speed optics. For example on 40GbE and 100GbE with IEEE, with the ITU-T for the use of new generation OTN's OTU-4 digital hierarchy for up to 112Gbit/s and with the OIF for long-haul 100G transmission. Ethernet is now the preferred interface for transport of packet applications and 100GbE represents a ten-fold increase in bandwidth compared to what is commonly used in Ethernet today.

Posted to the site on 13th March 2009