Ethernet-over-optical transmission achieves 100 Gbps

Lucent Technologies has announced the first transmissions of 100-Gbps Ethernet-over-optical technology. A research team at the company delivered a 107-Gbps optical-data stream, representing 100-Gbps data transmission and a 7% overhead for error correction. The technique uses duobinary signaling and a single-chip optical equalizer. Duobinary signaling uses positive, negative, and zero signal levels to represent a binary signal for communications transmission. The signals require less bandwidth than traditional NRZ (non-return-to-zero) signals. The optical equalizer, which Bell Labs invented two years ago, compensates for almost all intersymbol interference arising from modulator-bandwidth limitations in an optical, 107-Gbps, NRZ, electronic-time-division-multiplexing transmitter.

Lucent Technologies, www.lucent.com.