Only 3.43 milliseconds for 1,000 kilometers! my country's new generation communication network technology has achieved new breakthroughs

Recently, my country completed the world's first 1,000-kilometer hollow-core optical fiber bidirectional real-time transmission verification. This means that our country has made new breakthroughs in the key technical fields of new generation communication networks.

Technicians told reporters that this test achieved for the first time synchronous transmission of signals of 64Tb per second in both directions on a 1,007.48-kilometer optical fiber line, which is equivalent to supporting the upload and download of 160 4K movies per second (each is calculated as 50GB). The one-way transmission of a 1,000-kilometer signal only takes 3.43 milliseconds, setting a new record for the real-time transmission distance of hollow-core optical fiber. It is understood that this technology doubles the transmission capacity of the current best-performing solid-core optical fiber and increases the transmission distance by 60%. Compared with similar hollow-core optical fiber transmission tests, the transmission distance verified this time was increased by 50 times.

Huo Xiaoli, Chief Expert of China Telecom's New Generation Information and Communications Industry: Compared with traditional solid-core optical fiber, hollow-core optical fiber transmits signals in gas, and the delay can be reduced by 30%. The successful completion of this experiment has confirmed that hollow-core optical fiber can reuse existing transmission equipment, and can form long-distance, large-capacity and low-latency transmission capabilities, and reserve key technologies for the construction of computing power networks.

It is expected to replace solid core optical fiber in a wider range of fields in the future.

Our country is intensifying the construction of "six networks". Experts point out that the vast majority of widely used optical fibers are solid-core optical fibers. Signals are transmitted in quartz glass fiber cores, while signals of hollow-core optical fibers are mainly propagated in air channels. This test has verified the practical ability of hollow-core optical fibers in long-distance scenarios. In the future, it is expected to replace the currently commonly used solid-core optical fibers in a wider range of fields and scenarios, providing key technical support for my country's new generation of communication networks and computing power networks.

Wang Ruichun, chief scientist of YOFC Optical Fiber and Cable Co., Ltd.: The optical fiber core of solid-core optical fiber is quartz glass, and the speed of light transmission in quartz glass is 200,000 kilometers per second. The core of hollow-core optical fiber is air, and the speed of light transmission in air is close to the vacuum speed of 300,000 kilometers per second, which means that the time from the transmission end to the receiving end will be greatly shortened and the delay will be smaller.

Wang Ruichun said that the technical characteristics of hollow-core optical fiber can help better serve the national computing power strategy. Training and inference of large models requires collaborative networking across data centers. The data transmission speed and bandwidth between data centers will directly affect the efficiency of artificial intelligence training and inference.

Wang Ruichun: AI data centers actually have very fast latency requirements, and the speed of optical transmission is also very important. It can improve computing efficiency and significantly reduce the cost of investment in GPUs or memory chips.

At present, this hollow-core optical fiber technology has been applied in the world's first cross-border commercial hollow-core optical fiber financial line between Shenzhen and Hong Kong, and has also been implemented in more than 10 commercial and pilot projects in Asia, Europe and other regions.