Nokia and German service provider M-net are laying claim to the industry's first transmission of a probabilistically shaped wavelength.
M-net is the first carrier to trial Nokia's Photonic Service Engine 3 (PSE-3) coherent digital signal processing technology. Nokia said the PSE-3 is the first DSP to use probabilistic constellation shaping (PCS). PCS is a signal processing technique pioneered by Bell Labs that adjusts the optical signal to maximize the data-carrying capacity of an optical fiber over any distance, according to Nokia.
The field trial was conducted over a regional DWDM network spanning Bavaria as M-net prepares for the commercial roll out its new WDM network. M-net and Nokia hit 500 gigabits per second over a single probabilistically shaped 64-QAM wavelength in a real-world environment for the first time.
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M-net used PCS to shape the signal from its maximum capacity of 600G to a rate optimized for the specific fiber route used in the test. The high level of performance and flexibility enabled M-net to maximize the capacity of every network fiber, ensuring its backbone will meet the future demands of increased video traffic and 5G mobile broadband.
"We're excited to partner with M-net on the implementation of its new fiber optic backbone network," said Nokia's Sam Bucci, head of optical networking, in a statement. "The Technical University of Munich played a key role in the development of PCS, and the PSE-3 was largely developed at Nokia's R&D facility in Nuremberg, so it's only appropriate that the first field trial of PSE-3 technology would take place in Bavaria."