Nokia has announced that it has been working with Vodafone to develop a new Passive Optical Network (PON) technology to deliver 100Gbps on a single PON wavelength. The innovation uses Nokia Bell Labs tech and partner Vodafone has become the first major operator worldwide to successfully trial '100G PON'. The key achievement is that 100G PON can transfer data 10x faster than today's most advanced fibre networks.
In an email to HEXUS, Nokia revealed that 100G PON was achieved as follows: Nokia Bell Labs leveraged cost-effective 25G optics in combination with state-of-the-art digital signal processing (DSP) techniques; the application of DSP tech seems key as it enabled 50G, and 100G PON in what are described as 'straightforward' advances.
Furthermore, the tech uses the world's first application of flexible rate transmission in a PON network. Flexible rate transmission works by grouping fibre modems with similar physical network characteristics (e.g. loss or dispersion) and makes data transmission more efficient. Additionally, flexible rate transmission results in lower latency on a PON and cuts power consumption in half.
Vodafone’s Head of Fixed Access Centre of Excellence, Gavin Young, said that "100G PON has 40 times the capacity of today’s GPON networks, and 10 times the capacity of XGS-GPON, so it will help us keep ahead of the demand curve." Young added that Vodafone has already been testing modem grouping tech, so he thinks that will help Vodafone commercialise the innovation.
On the topic of adoption and commercialisation, you might be asking the obvious question about when 100G PON might come online. The answer, according to Nokia, is that it is likely to be commercially available in the second half of the decade.
