Japanese engineers demonstrated the first prototype optical switch for petabit networks. Such equipment can broadcast video with a resolution of 8K simultaneously to 10 million devices.

Japan's National Institute of Information and Communication Technologies has taken an important step towards the emergence of new generation functional networks - it has developed a switching device that processes optical signals at a speed of 1 Pbit / s.

The prototype uses modern large-scale low-loss optical switches based on MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) technology, three types of the latest multiplex fibers and routes signals from 10 Tbit / s to 1 Pbit / s. This is more than 100 times the capacity of modern networks.

The results of the demonstration were recognized by the scientific community at the 45th European Conference on Optical Communication ECOC 2019.

The National Institute is actively collaborating with scientists and industry in the development of new types of optical fiber and high-speed communication for short and long distances, as well as for data center networks. However, for transmitting data at a petabit rate, appropriate switches are required that could accurately control the data flows in networks. Until now, such technologies did not exist.

hightech.plus