Technology

Jisc is deploying Ciena’s 6,500 packet-optical platform powered by WaveLogic Ai coherent optics to provide unprecedented high-capacity 400G wavelength connectivity for the Janet Network. 

Verizon has completed a successful field trial delivering live 400Gb/s Ethernet traffic on a single wavelength between MPLS Core routers over its packet-optical network.

The trial demonstrated the interoperability between equipment from two different suppliers – Ciena and Juniper – alongside the capability to quadruple the typical capacity carried on one wavelength.

Ciena, Telstra and Ericsson have collaborated to achieve speeds over 61.5GHz spectrum on Telstra’s transmission network in Melbourne. The companies say that this demonstrates the highest spectral efficiency per fibre pair ever achieved in a live environment.

Silicon photonics is on the verge of experiencing dramatic uptake in optical transceivers, market research firm Yole Développement has reported, with the technology set to capture 35 per cent – almost $4 billion – of the optical transceiver market by 2025, up from just a few per cent in 2016.

The transceivers are expected to be used mostly for intra-data centre communication, according to Yole, with the strongest demand being for 400G (400 Gigabits per second), and 200G acting as an intermediate step between 100G and 400G.

The University of Southampton’s Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) is to lead a £6.1 million EPSRC-funded programme – officially launched earlier this month – in a concerted effort to develop and demonstrate the potential of hollow-core optical fibres.

The IEEE has formed the IEEE 802.11 Light Communications Study Group to work towards standards for light-based wireless local area networks (LANs) or Li-Fi as it is often known.

The new study group will directly engage with manufacturers, operators and end users in consensus building efforts and to create a Project Authorization Request (PAR) towards developing a global wireless local area network light communications standard.

BT and Huawei plan to establish a joint research group at the University of Cambridge with £25 million in funding and contributions over the next five years.

The collaboration will bring together ‘five to ten’ researchers – from BT Labs, the Huawei R&D Team and academics from the University of Cambridge – to explore new communications technologies that have the potential to unlock economic benefits for UK businesses and organisations.

Spanish incumbent Telefónica has successfully completed what it describes as a ‘pioneering’ project using plastic optical fibre (POF) in a home network that guarantees gigabit speeds to the customer.

Telefónica has not confirmed a commercial launch date, but online reports suggest the technology could be rolled out to consumers next year.

A multifunctional silicon photonics integrated circuit that can be programmed to perform a variety of different functions has been developed by researchers from Spain and the UK.

This is “the first photonic integrated chip that enables multiple functionalities by employing a single common architecture”, according to researchers from the Silicon Photonics Group at the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC), University of Southampton, and from the Institute of Telecommunications and Multimedia Applications (iTEAM) at the Universitat Politècnica de València,

UK researchers have tested a novel design for an optical transceiver that could provide dedicated data rates to each user of more than 10Gb/s for a truly super-fast, yet low-cost, broadband connection to every UK home.