Bandwidth-distance product
Because the effect of dispersion increases with the length of the fiber, a fiber transmission system is often characterized by its bandwidth-distance product, often expressed in units of MHz×km. This value is a product of bandwidth and distance because there is a trade off between the bandwidth of the signal and the distance it can be carried. For example, a common multimode fiber with bandwidth-distance product of 500 MHz×km could carry a 500 MHz signal for 1 km or a 1000 MHz signal for 0.5 km.
Through a combination of advances in dispersion management, wavelength-division multiplexing, and optical amplifiers, modern-day optical fibers can carry information at around 14 Terabits per second over 160 kilometers of fiber [4]. Engineers are always looking at current limitations in order to improve fiber-optic communication, and several of these restrictions are currently being researched. For instance, NTT was able to achieve 69.1 Tbit/s transmission by applying wavelength division multiplex (WDM) of 432 wavelengths with a capacity of 171 Gbit/s over a single 240 km-long optical fiber on March 25, 2010. This has been the highest optical transmission speed ever recorded. [5].
The per-channel light signals propagating in the fiber have been modulated at rates as high as 111 gigabits per second by NTT,[6][7] although 10 or 40 Gbit/s is typical in deployed systems.[8][9] Each fiber can carry many independent channels, each using a different wavelength of light (wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM)). The net data rate (data rate without overhead bytes) per fiber is the per-channel data rate reduced by the FEC overhead, multiplied by the number of channels (usually up to eighty in commercial dense WDM systems as of 2008[update]). The current laboratory fiber optic data rate record, held by Bell Labs in Villarceaux, France, is multiplexing 155 channels, each carrying 100 Gbit/s over a 7000 km fiber.[10]
Because the effect of dispersion increases with the length of the fiber, a fiber transmission system is often characterized by its bandwidth-distance product, often expressed in units of MHz×km. This value is a product of bandwidth and distance because there is a trade off between the bandwidth of the signal and the distance it can be carried. For example, a common multimode fiber with bandwidth-distance product of 500 MHz×km could carry a 500 MHz signal for 1 km or a 1000 MHz signal for 0.5 km.
Through a combination of advances in dispersion management, wavelength-division multiplexing, and optical amplifiers, modern-day optical fibers can carry information at around 14 Terabits per second over 160 kilometers of fiber [4]. Engineers are always looking at current limitations in order to improve fiber-optic communication, and several of these restrictions are currently being researched. For instance, NTT was able to achieve 69.1 Tbit/s transmission by applying wavelength division multiplex (WDM) of 432 wavelengths with a capacity of 171 Gbit/s over a single 240 km-long optical fiber on March 25, 2010. This has been the highest optical transmission speed ever recorded. [5].
The per-channel light signals propagating in the fiber have been modulated at rates as high as 111 gigabits per second by NTT,[6][7] although 10 or 40 Gbit/s is typical in deployed systems.[8][9] Each fiber can carry many independent channels, each using a different wavelength of light (wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM)). The net data rate (data rate without overhead bytes) per fiber is the per-channel data rate reduced by the FEC overhead, multiplied by the number of channels (usually up to eighty in commercial dense WDM systems as of 2008[update]). The current laboratory fiber optic data rate record, held by Bell Labs in Villarceaux, France, is multiplexing 155 channels, each carrying 100 Gbit/s over a 7000 km fiber.[10]
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