Space-division multiplexing: the final frontier

System vendors continue to trumpet their achievements in long-haul optical transmission speeds and overall data carried over fibre. 

Alcatel-Lucent announced earlier this month that France Telecom-Orange is using the industry's first 400 Gigabit link, connecting Paris and Lyon, while Infinera has detailed a trial demonstrating 8 Terabit-per-second (Tbps) of capacity over 1,175km and using 500 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) super-channels. 

"Integration always comes at the cost of crosstalk"

Peter Winzer, Bell Labs

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The evolution of optical networking

An upcoming issue of the Proceeedings of the IEEE will be dedicated solely to the topic of optical networking. This, says the lead editor, Professor Ioannis Tomkos at the Athens Information Technology Center, is a first in the journal's 100-year history.  The issue, entitled The Evolution of Optical Networking, will be published in either April or May and will have a dozen invited papers. 

One topic that will change the way we think about optical networks is flexible or elastic optical networks.

Professor Ioannis Tomkos

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