Prof. Roberto Gaudino, Scientific Coordinator of the FABULOUS EU project, was invited to participate to an open workshop organized by FSAN (the Full Service Access Network (FSAN) Group is a forum for the world’s leading telecommunications services providers, independent test labs, and equipment suppliers to work towards a common goal of truly broadband fibre access networks.

The OptCom group has carried out a thorough investigation of the so-called “symbol rate optimization” (SRO) strategy, which improves system performance by mitigating the impact of fiber non-linearity. The investigation was pushed to C-Band and showed that even in fully-loaded WDM systems SRO is quite effective. In fact, its effectiveness tends to grow with WDM bandwidth.

The OptCom group has carried out a ground-breaking experiment of ultra-long haul transmission, proving the effectiveness of the so-called “symbol rate optimization” (SRO) strategy to improve system  performance. 19 PM-QPSK channels at 128 Gb/s were sent over a link with 110 km span length and EDFA-only amplification. The fiber was PSCF, provided by SEC (Sumitomo Electric Industries). A system reach of over 14,200 km was obtained, with a 12.5% reach gain obtained through SRO, vs. conventional single-carrier transmission. SRO was implemented by subdividing each channel into subcarriers.