World Record Achieved: 1.02 Petabit/s Transmission over 1,808 km Using Standard-Diameter 19‑Core Optical Fiber
- Nguyen Tran Tien
- Jun 27
- 1 min read
On April 24, 2025, the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) and Sumitomo Electric Industries announced a groundbreaking experiment: transmitting 1.02 petabits per second (Pb/s) over a distance of 1,808 km using a standard-diameter (0.125 mm) 19‑core optical fiber. This achievement—equivalent to an impressive capacity–distance product of 1.86 exabit/s·km—sets a new world record for standard-diameter fibers .
Key innovations included:
Development of a low-loss 19‑core multicore fiber across the commercially used C and L wavelength bands.
Design of a matched amplification repeater system capable of simultaneously boosting signals in all 19 cores.
Use of polarization-multiplexed 16QAM signals across 180 wavelengths, circulated in loops of 86.1 km per span, and receiving via MIMO digital signal processing to suppress inter-core interference.
Published as the “Postdeadline Paper” at OFC 2025 in San Francisco on April 3 , the research demonstrates the potential for future high-capacity, long-distance optical communications—targeting infrastructure for Beyond 5G and 6G networks. The collaboration capitalizes on Sumitomo’s optimized fiber design and NICT’s advanced transmission system engineering.