- Nokia is using glass as a circuit board material for its latest high-speed backhaul
- The point-to-point Bell Labs prototype radio units are aimed to deliver up to 100 Gbps at a carrier above 110 GHz for up to a kilometer.
- The units will be available in 2027
Nokia is using glass for the circuit boards of its latest high-frequency point-to-point wireless backhaul, which can shuttle data around at 100 Gbps to enable the latest 5G networks.
The Finnish vendor showed off its latest work on backhaul during my recent visit to Nokia Bell Labs for the 100th anniversary of that facility. I wasn't allowed to take photos of the live demo of wireless backhaul in the active lab in New Jersey, but I got the low-down on the high-speed backhaul.
"If I want to go across a bridge in Manhattan, the cost of digging a new fiber down can be in the hundreds of millions, so nobody wants to do that," explained Shahriar Shahramian, director of Bell Labs’ ASICs & packaging research lab at Nokia. This is why many companies have created high-speed wireless backhaul links.
Backhaul Obstacles
These links, however, hit obstacles as the connections are implemented at higher frequencies. To get a fiber-like speed of 100 Gbps, these point-to-point links have to be implemented at 110 GHz or above, Shahramian explained, but with traditional material used for circuit boards, the performance "drops very rapidly above 100 GHz," he said.
"So basically you need a new material in order to make any system work at these very high frequencies. So, several years ago, we started looking at material made of glass," Shahramian noted.
The new generation of glass radio modules will be commercially available in 2027 as the sub-THz backhaul market evolves. Shahramian said the wireless prototype modules can deliver up to 100 Gbps at a carrier above 110GHz for up to a kilometer. Nokia rolled out a prototype glass module backhaul link for the Paris Olympics in summer 2024, Shahramian said.