ADVA Optical Networking announced recently that China Unicom has conducted a successful field trial of its G.metro (WDM-PON) technology in an advanced fronthaul network.
The wavelength-agnostic prototype uses a single bidirectional fiber link between head-end and tail-end equipment, reducing the requirement for wavelength configuration and management.
ADVA claims that by leveraging autonomous transponders, this innovative technique dramatically reduces cost and complexity for metro access network applications, including mobile fronthaul/backhaul, fixed broadband access and enterprise networks. After successfully evaluating ADVA Optical Networking’s G.metro technology, China Unicom showcased the device to customers at a laboratory demonstration in Beijing.
The company said that the demonstration revealed how this innovative new architecture significantly increases fiber capacity in access systems. ADVA Optical Networking’s prototype technology, which is defined by the ITU-T G.metro standard, directly distributes DWDM wavelengths to remote radio units, base stations, desktops or end users.
This enables up to 40 DWDM wavelength channels with a grid of 100GHz. Each channel is able to transmit data at 10Gbit/s over a 20km fiber distance without optical amplification. With a centralized wavelength locker at the head-end, cost and complexity at the tail-end are significantly reduced.
Guangquan Wang, editor, G.metro recommendation and director, network technology research institute, China Unicom
With this field trial and lab demo, we’ve shown how to achieve these efficiencies and ensure low-latency performance. During the trial, the prototype was installed in one of our central offices in Tianjin to replace the transmission link of one of our working LTE stations.
Michael Eiselt, director, advanced technology, ADVA Optical Networkings
This successful proof-of-concept shows that our innovation in G.metro technology is the answer. After five years of continuous development, we’ve demonstrated the feasibility and reliability of the autonomous wavelength tuning concept. We’ve shown how it works in a live network to significantly reduce the overall cost of data transport.
