TapTechNews, June 22nd. On June 20th, China Telecom, in conjunction with Yangtze Optical Fibre and Cable Joint Stock Limited Company (YOFC), ZTE Corporation, and China Information Technology Designing & Consulting Institute, at the seminar of the Next Generation Optical Transport Network Industry and Technology Standard Promotion Committee (CCSA TC618) and the New Generation Optical Transport Network Development Forum (NGOF) on 'All-Optical Network Technology and Applications in the Era of Intelligent Computing', announced the world's first live network demonstration project of a hollow-core optical fiber cable transmission system with a single wave of 1.2 Tbit/s, a one-way ultra 100 Tbit/s, and a transmission distance of 12.4274 miles (20 kilometers).
This live network demonstration relies on the national key research and development plan project 'Ultra-Broadband Optical Transmission System and Application Demonstration Based on New-Type Optical Fiber', completing the live network deployment of the hollow-core optical cable and large-capacity transmission between the Hangzhou Intelligent Computing Center of China Telecom and the Yiqiao IDC Data Center of Hangzhou Telecom. As a key node of China Telecom's intelligent computing capacity layout '2 + 3 + 7 + M + N', the Hangzhou Intelligent Computing Center has deployed kilocard-level computing power of Tianyi Cloud.
In the face of the demand for large bandwidth and low latency of the optical network due to the distributed deployment of computing power, this project introduces high-speed optical transmission equipment from ZTE Corporation, combines with spectrum compression, baud rate optimization, and amplification optimization techniques, successfully achieving the expansion of 41 1.2 Tbit/s wavelengths in the extended C-band and 64 800 Gbit/s wavelengths in the extended L-band, realizing a one-way capacity of more than 100 Tbit/s for transmission, with a live network transmission distance of 12.4274 miles (20 kilometers).
The hollow-core optical fiber cable independently developed by YOFC is deployed in the live network, and effective measures are taken to avoid the risk of water ingress during the deployment of the hollow-core optical cable through various combinations of plans, such as using water-blocking glue and double plastic caps at the cable ends to isolate the atmosphere, using a cable-laying net sleeve with a rotating head to reduce cap wear, and using a gun-type waterproof splice case for fusion splice points.
At the same time, breakthroughs have been made in the hollow-core optical fiber splicing technology, including the application of technologies such as low-power discharge and gradient amplification bevel optimization, achieving a homogeneous fusion loss of 0.05 dB, a single-point heterogeneous splicing loss of 0.25 dB, and a heterogeneous splicing return loss of -54 dB.
A relevant person in charge of China Telecom Zhejiang Company said: 'By undertaking the national key research and development plan project, we conduct a live network demonstration and verification of the hollow-core optical fiber combined with a 1.2 Tbit/s transmission system, providing detailed engineering data and live network application demonstration. In the future, Zhejiang Company will further cooperate with the industry to carry out research on a larger scale and more contents to provide a practical scenario for the interconnection of distributed intelligent computing centers; and continue to maintain the leading position in the field of basic transmission network technological innovation.'
According to TapTechNews' public data, Hollow-core fiber (HCF) is based on a brand-new air light guiding mechanism, which can guide light through the air instead of glass. It can break through the capacity limit and latency limit of solid-core fibers, showing obvious performance advantages in backbone and data center transmission, and is the next-generati on optical communication technology.
On June 6th, China Mobile opened the first 800 G hollow-core optical fiber transmission technology test network in Shenzhen-Guangdong to Dongguan, realizing a hollow-core to hollow-core fiber fusion splice loss as low as 0.05 dB, a hollow-core to solid-core connection less than 0.3 dB, and a cable loss of 0.6 dB per kilometer after laying on a 20-kilometer link.
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