10/17/2024, Optical fiber online news, Golden Autumn Shanghai, colorful. On October 10, the 2024 World Optical Fiber and Cable Conference was held in Shanghai. What optical networks are needed in the AI era? What are the current hot trends in the field of optical fiber communication? What challenges does the growing demand for traffic pose to the new infrastructure? Clues may be found at this event of the global fiber optic cable industry.

Since the beginning of this year, China has continuously accelerated the construction of new infrastructure represented by the pilot application of "ten gigabit optical network" and 5G, and continued to consolidate the foundation for the development of the digital economy. Optical network is an important network base for the development of the digital economy, and plays an important role in boosting GDP, improving innovation efficiency and production efficiency, and promoting the development of the digital economy. Ao Li, chief engineer of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, said that China is leading the global development of optical networks, gigabit optical networks are accelerating the popularity, and it is entering the development stage of "ten gigabit sailing", and key technologies and industries are developing in concert.

"New types of fiber optics and new types of fiber transmission systems are currently a research hotspot and have the potential to support much larger transmission capacities." Zhang Chengliang, president of the China Academy of Telecommunication Research, said that at present, weak-coupled multi-core fiber has achieved a number of pilot deployments of live networks; Hollow fiber has many advantages, such as low loss, large bandwidth, low nonlinearity, low delay, low dispersion and high dispersion flatness, and its preparation technology is maturing, which is expected to cause subversive changes in optical fiber communication.

Driven by the new formats of computing power networks, optical networks have ushered in major technological changes marked by C6T+L6T 400G ultra-wide spectrum transmission. Li Han, chief expert of China Mobile Group and director of Basic Network Technology Research Institute of China Mobile Research Institute, introduced that in 2024, China Mobile has completed the 400G interconnection network construction project of eight major hubs of the national "East Number and West calculation" project, opening the first year of 400G commercial use. Talking about the cross-building interconnection needs of the intelligent computing center network, Li Han pointed out that VCSEL technology based on hollow fiber is expected to achieve more than 2km single lane200G signal transmission, which can effectively expand the application scenario of VCSEL technology route. However, he also stressed that VCSEL transmission based on hollow fiber is still facing technical challenges and needs to be continuously tackled.

"From the metropolitan area to the provincial trunk to the national trunk, 400G is being extensively built, and 800G/Tbps is coming." Wang Guangquan, chief engineer of China Unicom Research Institute, said that in view of the 800G/Tbps transmission rate to be reached in the future metropolitan area network, G.654.E fiber has significant advantages in the trunkless working distance extension, and it is the right time to apply G.654.E fiber to the high bit rate transmission of the metropolitan area network. This decision takes into account many factors such as the performance and cost-effectiveness of G.654.E optical fiber technology, and he recommends that optical fiber, optical cable, transmission equipment, etc. be considered as a whole solution.

"The surging demand for data and computing power in the AI era accelerates technological progress and industrial upgrading in the optical fiber and cable industry." Zhuang Dan, executive director and president of Changfei Company, said that specifically, the fixed network from gigabit to 10-gigabit span, the intergenerational evolution of mobile networks, the optical interconnection of data centers, and the construction of trans-oceanic communications urgently need new technologies, new optical fibers, and new networks. He introduced that Changfei i-Fibre series fiber has the characteristics of super-large capacity, ultra-low loss, ultra-low delay, integrated sensing and environmental friendliness, and is committed to providing strong infrastructure support for the development of the future smart world.

Across the globe, the ease of sharing, buying, downloading, and communicating in the digital realm means, for network operators, managing an almost exponential increase in bandwidth to meet the world's growing demand. Frederick Persson, executive vice president of Prysmian's Digital Solutions group, said operators face many challenges, including network congestion, labor shortages, administration, reliability and performance, and environmental constraints.

John McGirr, senior vice president and general manager of Corning's optical fiber and cable business, believes that the cyclical trend of the optical fiber and cable industry is reversing and will return to a long-term trend. In the current era of generative AI, the data center has become the key infrastructure to support this technological leap. Corning introduced new fiber optics, new cables, new connectors, and new customized integrated optical solutions to address the infrastructure challenges posed by the demands of artificial intelligence.

The global optical fiber and cable market demand is expected to begin to recover next year, with an estimated annual growth rate of 6.2% to 568 million core kilometers, mainly depending on the rebound of the US market, the recovery of the European market and the stabilization of the Chinese market. Chenfei Wang, principal analyst and Head of the Cable Group at CRU, and Vishnu Patidar, senior analyst at CRU, believe that the construction of data centers based on generative AI technology will drive the growth of the demand for fiber optic cables in this sector, which is expected to account for 11% of the total demand by 2029.