Fujitsu today announced the development of the world’s first technology for future long-haul and metropolitan optical networks that can dynamically alter the architecture of optical network resources and enhance utilization efficiency without disrupting service. As a result of the spread of datacenter-centric cloud services, smartphones and other technologies in recent years, a wide variety of network-enabled services are now being offered. At the same time, for the core networks supporting these services, it is important to be able to shorten the time required to bring online new optical circuits that deliver on-demand services, as well as to increase transmission capacity while reducing the energy consumption of network devices.
Fujitsu has developed two technologies: flexible optical node technology that overcomes limitations in terms of optical signal wavelength, modulation scheme and routes; and “spectrum defragmentation technology, which leverages flexible optical nodes to increase the utilization efficiency of in-service optical network resources. This, in turn, makes it possible to improve optical network transmission capacity by up to 40%. Using the new technology, optical network architecture can be flexibly altered as needed, and given the improvement in the utilization efficiency of network resources, it is possible to accelerate bringing online new optical circuits while reducing power consumption by eliminating unnecessary network devices.

