Nokia, M-net test 500Gb ‘light show’
February 7, 2019
Nokia and German service provider M-net are testing ‘probabilistic constellation shaping’ using Nokia’s Photonic Service Engine 3 (PSE-3) as part of the preparation for rolling out a new wave division multiplexing (WDM) network for the southern German state of Bavaria.
PSE-3 uses probabilistic constellation shaping (PCS), an advanced signal processing technique pioneered by Bell Labs. It tweaks the optical signal to maximise the capacity over each individual wavelength “over any distance,” says Nokia.
During the trial, M-net transmitted at 500G over shaped 64 quadrature amplitude modulated (QAM) wavelengths on the deployed regional network with PCS optimising the signal for the specific route. The system has a maximum capacity of 600G. QAM is a way to combine two amplitude-modulated (AM) signals into a single channel, to double the available bandwidth, reports Mobile Europe.
The two companies claim this will enable M-net to maximise the capacity of every fibre so that the new backbone will be able to accommodate huge volumes of video traffic and the needs of 5G.