Siemens Information and Communications Networks in Boca Raton, Fla., has taken a step toward increasing the speed and data capacity over fiber optic networks by demonstrating transmission rates of 1.2 Tb/s over one 80-km-long optical fiber.

Engineers conducting the tests at the company's development center in Munich, Germany, employed wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) to achieve the high transmission rate. Sixty 20-Gb/s channels were created using Siemens' electronic time division multiplexing process, which transmits the individual data streams in different time slots on one line.

Siemens expects the advance to improve dense WDM long-haul optical networks so that they can transmit asynchronous transfer mode, Gigabit Ethernet, SONET and other data formats simultaneously on separate channels.