Abstract:
China Information Technology Group’s National Key Laboratory of Optical Communication Technology and Networks, Pengcheng Laboratory and FiberHome Fujikura Optical Fiber Technology Co., Ltd. completed a real-time bidirectional transmission test of 24-core multi-core optical fiber. The total transmission capacity reached 3.2 petabits per second (Pb/s), setting a new single-fiber bidirectional real-time optical transmission record. The previous record set by the team in March this year was 2.5 Pb/s, which is an increase of about 28% this time.
The test uses a 10.3-kilometer-long 24-core optical fiber to construct thousands of parallel transmission channels through space division multiplexing and S, C, and L bands. The system uses commercial coherent optical modules and high-order probabilistic shaping modulation, and optimizes the fiber core arrangement to reduce inter-core crosstalk. The research team also verified the real-time transmission capabilities of the self-developed optical module. The S-band single-wavelength rate reached 400 Gb/s, and the C and L-band single-wavelength rates reached 1.2 Tb/s.
3.2 Pb/s is equivalent to a data transmission capacity of 3200 Tb per second. According to the research team's estimation, this rate is theoretically equivalent to transmitting more than 20,000 4K movies per second, or carrying approximately 3.2 million gigabit broadband users at the same time; these are capacity conversions that are easy to understand, and are not the actual network speeds provided to households. The test link is only 10.3 kilometers long and uses 24-core dedicated multi-core optical fiber, so it does not mean that existing home broadband or ordinary single-core optical fiber has reached this level.
The research team stated that the capacity limit of traditional commercial single-core G.652 fiber in the C and L bands is approximately 100 Tb/s, and the total capacity of this multi-core solution is approximately 32 times that. By setting up multiple independent cores in the same optical fiber to transmit signals, multi-core optical fiber is expected to expand the capacity of data center interconnections, backbone networks and future 6G bearer networks; however, the technology is still in the experimental verification stage and requires further engineering before large-scale deployment.
This result was selected for the 2026 International Optical Fiber Communications Conference OFC and was rated as a high-scoring paper. The team was also invited to submit a paper to the "Journal of Lightwave Technology". Some previous laboratory studies have achieved higher transmission rates on similar multi-core optical fibers, but using experimental equipment and signal processing schemes; the focus of this result is to verify a system closer to a commercial architecture under real-time transmission conditions.
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