International. Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent's research group, has achieved significant technological innovation in its quest to address the capacity limits of optical networks to address the explosive growth in traffic expected with 5G networks and the Internet of Things.
According to a study by Bell Labs, companies and telecom operators are seeing rapid growth in data traffic on networks, with cumulative annual rates of up to 100%. With the promise of 5G wireless technology on the horizon, Bell Labs estimates that, in about a decade, there will be a pressing need for commercial optical transport systems that can handle a capacity of Petabits per second.
This demand threatens to exceed the capacity limits of today's fiber optic networks. At the 2015 IEEE Photonics conference, Bell Labs presented an optical networking technology that could potentially help operators address this expansion: a Multi-Input and Multiple Output Real-Time Division Multiplexing in Space (MIMO-SDM) optical system.
This is the first worldwide demonstration of Bell Labs' pioneering MIMO-SDM technique, which has the potential to increase current fiber capacity from 10 to 20 Terabits per second to a capacity of Petabits per second – the equivalent of 1,000 Terabits/s. The success of the real-time MIMO-SDM 6 x 6 experiment, using six transmitters and six receivers in combination with real-time digital signal processing, was performed on a 60-kilometer-long coupled mode fiber at Bell Labs' global headquarters in New Jersey.
Using the MIMO-SDM technique, Bell Labs aim to overcome the capacity limitations imposed by the nonlinear 'Shannon limit' of current optical fibers. This principle establishes a fundamental threshold for the maximum rate of information transfer in a single optical fiber similar to the fibers used in today's long-distance and metropolitan transport networks.
