Sumitomo Electric reports optical fiber loss record

Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd. reported during a post-deadline paper at OFC 2017 last month that it has achieved optical fiber loss of 0.1419 dB/km, which it says is a new world record. Company technicians measured the loss at 1560 nm.

Sumitomo Electric says it achieved the low loss through advances in fiber-glass and polymer coating. In the post-deadline paper description, the paper authors described the fiber used as a silica-core fiber with 1290°C low fictive temperature, 147-μm² large effective area, and low microbending loss due to the use of a soft primary coating.

The company points out that as capacity requirements grow and operators rely on increasingly complex modulation formats, ultra low loss (ULL) fibers have become more important for both terrestrial and submarine network applications.

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