A transmission trial using a 1,066 kilometre fibre-optic ring on NBN Co's transit network reached one terabit per second speeds, the network builder and its equipment vendor Coriant said yesterday.
The successful field trial in Toowoomba, Queensland, showed that more than a 30 percent capacity increase is possible on the NBN Co backbone network. What's more, the capacity increase is achievable over a longer distance of up to 1,600 kilometres, test results from the trial show.
Currently, the maximum transmission capacity with existing Coriant 7300 dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) hardware and fibre is 9.6Tbps.
By using super-channel transmissions, a 35 percent increase in spectral efficiency is achieved, leading to maximum theoretical capcity of 13Tbps on the network.
NBN Co chief technology officer Gary McLaren said the results of the trial show that the established backbone network can be easily upgraded with new optics and electronics to meet future increases in demand.
“As high-bandwidth applications and the growth of internet usage drive increased demand for network capacity, the ease of upgrading to higher transmission rates in our Transit Network will enable us to continue to deliver a reliable and high-quality broadband experience for our customers,” McLaren said.
Super-channels is a technology whereby several coherent optical carriers are unified as a single transmission conduit to provide higher data rates.
The Toowoomba trial tested a super-channel transmission placed in three separate c-band locations in a 396GHz grid.
An earlier trial this year by BT and Alcatel-Lucent in the UK using seven wavelengths bonded into a super-channel hit 1.4Tbps over an existing fibre link between London and Ipswich.
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