Coherent transmission field trial over 50GHz grid metro infrastructure

The industry-first field trial showcased GlobalConnect’s ability to easily and cost-effectively scale its current optical transport network to meet growing capacity demands while preserving its investment in deployed infrastructure with leading-edge optical technology from Infinera.

Following a merger with Broadnet, the GlobalConnect open fibre infrastructure spans over 42,000 kilometres and provides the foundation for a wide range of carrier-class services for wholesale and corporate customers. Conducted over a live GlobalConnect optical link in the Oslo metropolitan area, the field trial featured the latest coherent transmission capabilities of the Infinera Groove G30 Compact Modular Platform and seamless interoperability with deployed metro transport infrastructure. 

The error-free testing included multiple 300G and 400G alien wavelength transmission use cases over a live metro network link originally designed for and currently running 10G wavelengths using on-off keying (OOK) modulation technology. The field trial showcased the ability to boost the capacity of a 10G-engineered OOK-based network by going from 10G to 400G per wavelength, thus increasing the fibre capacity to 32 terabits on an existing 50 gigahertz (GHz) fixed grid metro network. 

“With the explosive growth in data traffic and acceleration of digital transformation, optical network flexibility and scalability remain critical to our ability to be responsive to our customers’ evolving communications needs,” said Anders Kuhn Saaby, CTO, GlobalConnect. “We remain committed to advancing our fibre infrastructure with cutting-edge technologies to keep pace with growing capacity demands and allow us to expand our addressable market.”

The Infinera Groove G30 is an open, disaggregated networking solution designed to be compatible with third-party optical line systems and diverse network environments, including conventional 10G-engineered non-coherent metro networks designed with OOK, a legacy transport technology that poses limitations for upgrading to higher-capacity wavelengths. 

“We were pleased to work with GlobalConnect to showcase the state-of-the-art performance of our Groove G30 compact modular solution,” said Glenn Laxdal, Senior Vice President of Disaggregated, Edge, and Access Solutions at Infinera. “This solution helps network operators eliminate the technology roadblocks to seamless scaling of conventional 10G network infrastructure to cost-effectively meet higher-capacity customer demands.”