A research team from the China Information Communication Technologies Group, Peng Cheng Laboratory, and FiberHome Fujikura has achieved a real-time bidirectional transmission capacity of 3.2 Pb/s. This result sets a new record for single-fiber bidirectional optical transmission, surpassing the team's previous record of 2.5 Pb/s set in March.
The experiment utilized a 10.3-kilometer 24-core multicore fiber. By employing space-division multiplexing across S, C, and L bands, the researchers created thousands of parallel channels. The system integrates commercial coherent optical modules and high-order probabilistic shaping modulation to manage signal crosstalk.
The transmission rates reached 400 Gb/s per wavelength in the S-band and 1.2 Tb/s per wavelength in the C and L bands. The researchers noted that this capacity is approximately 32 times higher than the 100 Tb/s limit of traditional commercial G.652 single-core fibers. The technology is currently in the experimental stage.
The project has been accepted as a high-scoring paper for the 2026 Optical Fiber Communication Conference (OFC). The team has also been invited to submit their findings to the Journal of Lightwave Technology. This achievement emphasizes real-time transmission using systems that closely resemble commercial architectures.
