Another Guinness World Record—this time for hollow-core fiber transmission

Recently, the NRL Nike laser received Guinness World Records recognition for the enabling the highest projectile velocity. And now, MODE-GAP, the European collaborative R&D project, has been officially recognized by Guinness World Records for achieving the highest data transmission rate over hollow-core optical fiber. Supported within the European Commission's 7th Framework Programme, the MODE-GAP project has brought together leading European organizations to address methods of resolving the future communication network capacity crunch.

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Collaborating within the MODE-GAP project, scientists and engineers have successfully achieved the world's highest data transmission rate of 57.6 Tb/s (gross rate of 73.7 Tb/s) over hollow-core optical fiber on Coriant's testbed facility. This record is an astounding 50 times faster than the previous record.

Steering the success of the collaboration, project manager Ian Giles, says, "We are delighted that the work has achieved something so ground-breaking by potentially increasing the capacity of broadband core networks. The project is addressing several possible architecture solutions for Space Division Multiplexing (SDM) including the use of hollow core fibre, which is perhaps one of the more advanced approaches. All of the partners contributed to the record results and recognition of this project, with an official Guinness World Record confirms the value of collaborative R&D projects for Europe."

The project has also made major achievements and world firsts in other areas of its work in pushing high capacity transmission networks, including the first field trial of SDM with live traffic. MODE-GAP is continuing to explore cutting edge solutions to develop the next generation internet infrastructure with a primary goal of increasing the traffic handling capability of optical networks. The project has been highly successful in that it has now been extended for a further 6 months to explore additional enhancements.

The record, which was previously acknowledged at the OFC conference in March, has followed a number of records achieved by MODE-GAP. In recent years, MODE-GAP achieved record transmission results over hollow core photonic band gap fibers for transmission in the 2000 nm region, offering increased bandwidth opportunities. The project also achieved success in the areas of Spatial Division Multiplexing (SDM) multimode fibers, from basic fiber-optic components through to subsystems and full system validation.

Professor David Richardson, Optoelectronics Research Centre at University of Southampton says, "The MODE-GAP project has exceeded expectations in terms of technological innovation and breakthroughs. MODE-GAP has shown the potential of hollow core photonic band gap fibres to compete with conventional solid core fibre for telecommunications applications. With this wealth of knowledge and the recognised success from the Guinness World record, we are confident that our research will continue to produce many more achievements."

Key organisations comprising MODE-GAP include the University of Southampton's Optoelectronics Research Centre, the University of Aston's Institute of Photonic Technologies, ESPCI ParisTech, OFS Fitel Denmark APS, Phoenix Photonics, the COBRA Institute at Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, Eblana Photonics Ltd, Coriant R&D GmbH, Nokia Siemens Networks GMBH & Co. KG and the Tyndall National Institute of University College Cork.

SOURCE: MODE-GAP; http://modegap.eu/