Modern society is continually making new demands on telecommunications. In the foreseeable future, for example, it will have to be possible to access great volumes of data and process them anywhere and transmit them via various networks to any other place. To do this necessitates the widespread availability of high-volume transmission capacity. And, in order to use this quickly, simply and at low cost, technologogical afid organizational changes are necessary in the existing telecommunications infrastructure. Better use of existing infrastructure Telecommunication networks today are still used mainly for long-distance calls. In Germany alone there are more than 45 million fixed network subscribers and some 10 million mobile subscribers. But these access lines are only partly used for data, fax and video transmission. Annual growth of data communication is many times greater than that of voice communication, so the trend is clearly moving towards the former. The advantages of the Services available here are able to meet customer requirements for multi-service capability and high bandwidths through IP and ATM protocols. (Fig. 1) Fig. 1 Voice and data growth Convergence of networks Integrating fixed and mobile networks on the one hand and voice and data on the other requires flexible, intelligent networks. Whereas networks in the past were specially designed for one or only a few Services, a great variety of features will have to be integrated in one network in the future. Lucents routing and transport technology, for example, already enables all communication to be handled via the Internet protocol. With transmission rates of up to 2.5 Gbit/s, 512 different grades of Service and 64,000 active communications can already be POEL TELEKOMMUNIKATION 2000 Seite 1
supported today. Rising numbers of users of relatively new media, such as the Internet, combined with the growing complexity and broadband requirements of applications, however, will soon strain capacity to its limits. The wealth of Information contained in the Internet, for example, will then be difficult to access. Fig. 2 One of the many circuit boards that serve as part of Lucents local nurnber portability technology. POEL TELEKOMMUNIKATION 2000 Seite 2
Fig. 3 Circuit boards are assembled automatically at Lucent Technologies state-of-the-art manufacturing plant in Nuremberg. Visual inspections by specially trained staff provides an additional level of quality assurance. The Internet The idea of the internet originated in the year 1969. 20 years ago, networking of Computers of more or less the same Standard was begun in the USA. Data was not transferred between these Computers via connections established for the duration of the transmission, as is the case with telephone networks, however. They used any capacity available at random. The only access criteria were a special address for each subscriber (Internet or IP address) and a globally standardized transmission Standard, in other words the Internet Protocol (IP) and the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), generally known as TCP/IP. Simple and problem-free access and the use of only one network for all types of communication, as well as partly low transmission charges, make the internet of interest to everyone. POEL TELEKOMMUNIKATION 2000 Seite 3
Fig. 4 Measurement of 10 Gbit/s WDM transmission System at Lucents Bell Labs in Nuremberg Fig. 5 the sub-assemblies for the optical transmission systeme in the wave star range are developed by Lucent technologies at Bell Labs in Nuremberg, and manufactured for the international market in their state-of-th-art manufacturing plant POEL TELEKOMMUNIKATION 2000 Seite 4
The way out of the data gridlock Global transmission capacity requirements are growing at an annual rate of approx. 50 percent, which leads to increasing demand for Systems with high bandwidths. Modern transmission Systems have a capacity of 2.5 Gbit/s or 10 Gbit/s. This is equivalent to 30,000 or 120,000 simultaneous telephone calls. (Fig. 4) New technologies open up the possibility of significantly higher transmission rates without requiring additional fiber optic cable. The Wave Division Multiplexing (WDM) technology developed at Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies' development centre, facilitates multiple use of existing fiber optic cables to transmit voice, data and Video Signals in the form of light pulses. Using this optical multiplexing process, the individual channels are transported via different wavelengths on the optical transmission system. Fig. 6 Laserlight This is possible because light waves of different lengths do not interfere with each other. Lucents optical transmission system, WaveStar OLS 400G, can transmit 400 gigabits per second via one single optical fiber. This is more than the entire data traffic per second on the internet. With 400 gigabits per second, this optical transmission system has five times more capacity than existing fiber optic Systems. The new optical transmission system can be expanded to provide transmission capacity of up to 3.2 tetrabit/s (= 3.2 trillion bits). This is equivalent to transmitting 90,000 volumes of an encylopedia in one second. The singleplatform System developed by Bell Labs is the first of ist kind, permitting operators gradual expansion from one to as many as 80 wavelenqths. POEL TELEKOMMUNIKATION 2000 Seite 5
Using a new manufacturing process, Lucent technologies have also succeeded in producing the AllWave optical fiber which can operate in a range of the transmission spectrum which has not been used up to now and offers 50 percent more available wavelengths (Fig. 7). This means that transmission capacity of up to 173 Tbit/s (2.5 billion simultaneous telephone calls) is possible using WDM technology. This points the way out of the data gridlock. (Fig. 8) Fig. 7 Fig. 8 New cable and wave multiplexing technology increase transmission capacity POEL TELEKOMMUNIKATION 2000 Seite 6
Stepping into the next generation The existing telecommunication infrastructure can thus facilitate electronic data processing and communication between individuals and institutions very easily and at low cost. In industrialized countries virtually everyone will then be able to access information of all kinds at any time. In telecommunications, this dramatic increase in available bandwidth will mean reductions in the costs of data transmision. The wide variety of network infrastructures will greatly increase in the future. In companies, intranets in particular will gain in significance, as they will permit significant productivity growth due to rapid and simple distribution of information. This will open the way for new multimedia applications, and the success of video telephony, telelearning and teleworking will be assured. Summary Telecommunication already forms the backbone of the modern information society today and affects both our private and professional lives. Information unlimited by national boundaries will hetp to further and accelerate the process of integration in business and culture in Europe and throughout the world. The future has already bequn. (Fiq. 9) Fig. 9 Technical development goes on. A laser driver for the 40-Gbit/s TDM transmission System in the PHOTONIK II research project at Lucent Technologies in Nuremberg POEL TELEKOMMUNIKATION 2000 Seite 7
Fig. 10 When anomalies are detected during testing, the error is analysed in the GSM testing laboratory of Lucent Technologies, to locate the cause of the problem in the circuit board. POEL TELEKOMMUNIKATION 2000 Seite 8