Ciena and others achieve first 3.2Tb/s over distance

The industry-first milestone was achieved with both 8-WDM and DR8 configurations using Ciena’s 224 GBaud DAC to generate the 448Gb/s PAM4 signal and HyperLight’s 140 GHz thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) modulators to transmit the optical signal. The experiment was performed at McGill University using its transmission system and associated digital signal processing software.

The need for higher transmission speeds is being driven by massive AI factories, which require scalable networks that leverage high-speed optics with lower power consumption. To address these requirements, the demonstration shows how transceiver design can be improved using advanced CMOS processes and integrated photonics to reduce power and complexity. 

Key takeaways:

• The demonstration was a pioneering scientific achievement, attaining unprecedented link performance for the next major intra-data centre networking speed grade
• 400G per-lane optical links were successfully operated in configurations aligning with hyperscalers’ stringent requirements:  

• 2km CWDM (FR8) 
• 2km parallel fibre (DR8+)  
• 500m parallel fibre (DR8)