Sumitomo Electric to Present New Ultra-Low Loss Silica Glass Optical Fiber at OFC 2024

Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd. presents the achievement of new silica glass optical fiber with an ultra-low loss of 0.1397 dB/km.

The demand for communication capacity is ever-growing due to the advancement of cloud services such as AI. To meet the demand, there is an increasing need to improve the performance of optical communication systems. Since the reduction in the transmission loss of optical fiber can contribute to such improvement by reducing the number of optical repeaters and extending transmission distances, there have been continuous R&D activities for lower transmission losses.

Since the commercialization of the low-loss pure-silica-core optical fiber*¹ Z fiber™ in 1988, we have been leading the development of the technologies and products of low-loss optical fibers. In 2021, we realized mass production of ultra-low-loss optical fiber*² Z-PLUS Fiber™ 150 with a transmission loss of 0.14 dB/km.

Now, we have further advanced the technology of low-loss silica glass fiber and reduced the transmission loss of silica glass optical fiber down to 0.1397 dB/km at a wavelength of 1566 nm, renewing our previous achievement of 0.1419 dB/km in 2017. We will continue to develop the most advanced technologies and provide the best products to contribute to the improved performances of long-distance optical communication systems such as submarine cables and terrestrial backbone networks.

This work has been accepted as a regular paper at the Optical Fiber Communication Conference (OFC) 2024 to be held in San Diego, and we will present the paper titled “Record Low Loss Optical Fiber With 0.1397 dB/km” on March 26, 2024.

■ References
*1 Low-loss pure-silica core optical fiber
Optical fiber that achieves a low transmission loss by applying pure silica (SiO₂) glass to the core area

*2 Ultra-low-loss optical fiber
Mentioned here Optical fibers having transmission losses reduced down to 0.15 dB/km or lower