20 March 2018, Shenzhen, China - ZTE Corporation (0763.HK / 000063.SZ), a major international provider of telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the Mobile Internet, along with OFS and NeoPhotonics, today transmitted 66GBaud PDM-16QAM 400Gb/s WDM signals over 6,000 km on 100 km spans with the channel spacing of 75GHz, breaking the world record of 400G ultra-long-haul (ULH) high-speed transmission distance and setting a new benchmark for beyond 100G ULH transmission in global optical networking industry.

The system in this experiment employs state-of-the-art technologies and devices of the three parties, including the high-sensitivity probability shaping coherent communication technology developed by ZTE, the low-power-consumption small-sized high-bandwidth coherent driver modulator (HB-CDM) designed and produced by NeoPhotonics and the large-aperture low-loss OFS TeraWave^® fibers provided by OFS.

In this test, the 506Gb/s PDM-16 QAM signals after probability shaping are transmitted over 6,000 km on OFS 100 km spans with the channel spacing of 75GHz. This is the longest WDM transmission distance of PDM-16QAM signals so far based on the terrestrial transmission system (100km span) with the line spectrum efficiency exceeding 5.3b/s/Hz.

“Single-carrier 400G transmission has become the most attractive beyond 100G solution since it can reduce system complexity,” said Dr. Yu Jianjun, ZTE Scientist in optical communication and OSA Fellow, “ ZTE has extended researches on 400G transport technologies for a long term and solved a variety of key technical problems. The probability shaping technology used in this experiment lengthens the transmission distance by 40%.”

ZTE has been committed to providing 400G/1T and higher-speed technologies with important R&D resources and have accomplished a number of key innovations in this field.

In 2015, ZTE together with OFS released a new 400G ULH high-speed transmission record by transmitting 128.8-GBaud QPSK WDM signals over 10,130 km and 6,078 km on terrestrial fiber links.

In 2016, ZTE transmitted 120GBaud 16QAM signals over 1,200 km on terrestrial fiber links, setting a new 800G transmission record.

In 2017, ZTE adopted an enhanced advanced algorithm to transmit WDM signals on standard single-mode fiber links over 2,125 km, breaking the 400G 8QAM signal transmission record.

So far, ZTE has deployed more than 400 100G and beyond commercial networks and trial networks for high-end operators in Asia-Pacific, Europe, America, Africa with the total fiber length exceeding 400,000 km.

OFS is leading the industry in developing and commercializing large-area low-loss fibers, which are used for coherent transmission. The industry’s first 400G experiment was carried out on
prefabricated TeraWave^® fibers. NeoPhotonics is leading the world in developing and commercializing adjustable lasers and high-speed coherent receivers. It was the first company that launched the complete solutions of high-baud-rate coherent optical devices in recent years.