Functions and Characteristics / APN
APN
The All-Photonics Network (APN) is one of the major technological fields that comprise IOWN. It introduces photonics-based technologies into everything from devices to networks and aims to realize extremely low power consumption, high speed, high capacity, and low latency transmission through wavelength networks that provide end-to-end optical wavelength paths. This enables us to increase the amount of communication, avoid network complexity and congestion, reduce energy consumption through power-saving communication within the data center, and provide new value and value through real-time digital twin.
In addition to solving network issues such as increasing network complexity and delays due to congestion, and energy consumption issues such as increasing power consumption in data centers, the network will provide new experiences and value such as the convergence of real and online services to meet changing lifestyles.
All Photonics Network is working to achieve the target performance (100 x power efficiency, 125 x capacity, 1/200 end-to-end latency) by 2030 using photonics-based technologies.
As an example of transmission capacity, in 2019, NTT succeeded in a laboratory-level experiment of transmission at 1 Tbit/s per wavelength with 35 waves and wavelength multiplexing*1, and in 2023, NTT succeeded in a field demonstration of the world‘s longest 336 km transmission at 1.2 Tbps per wavelength using installed commercial optical fiber, and the world’s largest data transmission capacity at over 1 Tbps*2. Currently, we are aiming for transmission at 1Pbit/s per fiber by utilizing multi-core fibers, which have a new structure with many cores arranged in a single fiber.
On March 16, 2023, NTT EAST and NTT WEST Japan began providing APN IOWN1.0 as an APN service.
*1：https://group.ntt/en/newsrelease/2019/03/07/190307a.html
*2：https://group.ntt/en/newsrelease/2023/10/30/231030a.html
