Japan's NTT Com has completed the world's first field trial of top-level 400Gbps transmissions on an existing 100G optical network.
The operator and parent NTT were able to stably transmit 400G optical signals without affecting the existing 100G channels on a WDM system.
The test employed world-top-level waveform distortion compensation techniques and 400G digital coherent optical transmission techniques.
During the trial, NTT tested both a single 100Gbps optical channel with eleven adjacent 400Gps channels and a single 400Gbps channel with eleven adjacent 100Gbps channels.
Adding and removing 400Gbps channels did not affect the communications performance of the other channels.
According to NTT Com, the successful trial is a step closer to expanding optical communication capacity by four times that of currently-installed 100G systems, paving the way for 4K/8K streaming and the evolution of the IoT.
The NTT Group recently put 100Gbps transmission systems that use digital coherent optical communications technology into commercial use, and is now working to increase the capacity of 100G systems.
NTT and NTT Com now plan to establish world-top-level optical transport systems with over 400Gbps transmission capacity and beyond, as well as super-high-speed Ethernet technology including 400GE.