Oki Develops a New Method of Optical Fiber Access - Enabling Service Providers to Guarantee Bandwidth of 10 Gbps -

Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. today announced that the company has succeeded in developing a new optical-fiber access technology based on OCDM (optical code division multiplexing). This technology, developed by Oki in collaboration with Osaka University, allows service providers to guarantee transmission capacity of up to 10 Gbps in bandwidth for bi-directional communications over an access network. Service providers will also be able to offer flexible services for a variety of customer needs, such as offering multiple services on one network. The company will report its detailed results on September 10 at the 2002 IEICE (Institute of Electronics, Information, and Communication Engineers) Society Conference.

Tokyo, Japan, September 9, 2002 -- Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. (TSE: 6703) today announced that the company has succeeded in developing a new optical-fiber access technology based on OCDM (optical code division multiplexing). This technology, developed by Oki in collaboration with Osaka University, allows service providers to guarantee transmission capacity of up to 10 Gbps in bandwidth for bi-directional communications over an access network. Service providers will also be able to offer flexible services for a variety of customer needs, such as offering multiple services on one network. The company will report its detailed results on September 10 at the 2002 IEICE (Institute of Electronics, Information, and Communication Engineers) Society Conference.

"Oki believes that this technology will become indispensable in providing valuable new services that flexibly respond to customer requirements on bandwidth. Customers will be able to enjoy multiple services such as motion pictures, voices, and data simultaneously under the real broadband environment. Our new method will expand the optical communications market," said Harushige Sugimoto, General Manager of the Corporate Research and Development Center at Oki Electric.

With current broadband services, it is difficult to provide customers with both large data-transmission capacity and QoS (quality of service) at the same time, since these are best-effort type services involving shared bandwidths among a number of users. With the new OCDM technology, the bandwidth of a wavelength in an optical fiber is further multiplexed and de-multiplexed by optical codes. This technology also allows for the allocation of services and users using these optical codes, which enables service providers to control a variety of bandwidths flexibly according to customer requests. Oki has succeeded in proving that the new technology will allow service providers to guarantee bandwidth up to 10 Gbps, one hundred to one thousand times of the capacity of current services.

The optical encoder/decoder Oki has developed utilizes a passive optical element, the FBG (Fiber-Bragg-Grating) filter. Oki has succeeded in enhancing the data bit rate of an FBG-type encoder/decoder, and this makes it possible to encode signals at various speeds (from 1Gbps to 10Gbps) with one encoder/decoder. Since the equipment does not require an electrical power supply, a much smaller optical transmission system becomes possible at lower cost.

Using this newly developed technology, Oki intends to develop commercial optical encoder/decoder products and an optical encoder/decoder and optical code transceiver/receiver within a year.

About the OCDM Method:
This is a method used to multiplex signals by diffusing them via various optical codes on an optical fiber; this method enables much more effective use of optical signal frequency than possible with WDM technology. Receivers acquire the coincident signals by selecting codes. Passive optical elements such as FBG can be used for an encoder/decoder, which results in a faster signal rate, due to the lack of electrical limitation.

Notes:
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About Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd.
Founded more than a century ago in 1881, Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. is Japan's first telecommunications manufacturer, headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. With more than 23,000 employees worldwide, Oki Electric provides customers with top-quality products, technologies and solutions for telecommunications systems, information systems and electronic devices through its corporate vision, "Oki, Network Solutions for a Global Society." Visit Oki's global web site at http://www.oki.com/.