Bell Labs Transmits Data at 107 Gb/s

ANAHEIM, Calif., March 8, 2006 -- Bell Labs, the research and development arm of Lucent Technologies located in Murray Hill, N.J., announced the first reported optical transport of electronically multiplexed 107 Gb/s data in a paper presented at OFC/NFOEC (Optical Fiber Communication/National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference) in Anaheim today. The company said the result represents another significant milestone in the industry's move toward being able to offer transport speeds of 100 Gb/s Ethernet data networking in metro area networks.

According to Bell Labs, until now there has been no reported case of a high-speed electronically multiplexed optical signal transmitted at speeds greater than 85.4 Gb/s, and no fiber transmission of signals faster than 42.7 Gb/s in a spectrally compact non-RZ (return-to-zero) format have ever been reported. In its OFC presentation, Bell Labs reported that its researchers were able to transmit 10 channels of 107-Gb/s traffic, optically modulated using electrical multiplexing, over a distance of 400 kilometers. Key to this achievement was the use of an integrated optical equalizer, built as a single-chip photonic integrated circuit.

"We are very excited about this latest test result and innovation which, when combined with our recently announced breakthrough in the first recorded transmission of 100 Gb/s, provides the foundation for the next generation of broadband networking," said Bell Labs Director Martin Zirngibl. "We see this as a critical area of Bell Labs' research as carriers look to deploy architectures that are optimized to respond to the dramatic increase in the amount of IP/data traffic produced by their enterprise customers and consumers. We feel 100 Gigabit Ethernet is a particularly important technology as carriers look to deploy multimedia IP services, such as IPTV, which requires networks that efficiently multiplex and transmit high amounts of IP-based data in its native Ethernet format."

Today data signals such as the information carried over the Internet are transported at rates of about 10 Gb/s and occasionally 40 Gb/s over SONET connections. Bell Labs said its research is aimed at developing the technologies and architectures to transmit, transport and switch 107 Gb/s Ethernet-over- optical data stream (representing 100 Gb/s of data transmission plus a standard 7 percent overhead for error correction).

A copy of the Bell Labs paper is available from OFC/NFOEC by sending an e-mail to custserv@osa.org or by calling (202) 416-1907. For more information about Bell Labs, visit: www.bell-labs.com

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