Chinese researchers have achieved a record-breaking bidirectional data transmission speed of 3.2 petabits per second using a single 24-core optical fiber. This capacity is sufficient to transmit over 20,000 4K movies in one second.
The project was a collaboration between the State Key Laboratory of Optical Fiber and Cable Manufacture (part of CICT), the Peng Cheng Laboratory, and Fenghuo Fujikura Fiber Optic Technology. The team utilized a 10.3-kilometer fiber segment for the tests.
By combining multi-band multiplexing (S+C+L bands) with spatial multiplexing, the engineers created thousands of parallel data channels. The system employs commercial coherent optical modules and high-order probabilistic shaping modulation to maintain stability.
The new architecture increases the total capacity of a single fiber by 32 times compared to the 100 terabits per second limit of traditional G.652 single-core fibers. The system reached 400 Gbps per channel in the S-band and 1.2 Tbps per channel in the C+L bands.
The developers optimized the fiber core layout to suppress crosstalk and simplify signal alignment. This technology is intended for future use in large-scale data center interconnects, backbone networks, and 6G communication infrastructure.
