Back in the day, if something went wrong with your car, it wasn’t too hard to figure out the problem.

If the engine was making a strange banging noise, you could lift the hood, have a look around, and maybe, if you knew what you were doing, have a crack at identifying the cause. More likely, you’d get a mechanic to look at it. Mechanics had much more specialist knowledge, of course, but fixing a car wasn’t the most complicated thing in the world.

So Much Data

Modern cars are complicated, to the extent that you almost need to be a computer programmer to fix them. Underneath the hood you have multiple little computers, hundreds of sensors, and millions of lines of software. It’s practically impossible for an individual to diagnose a fault on their own, which is why many of today's vehicles monitor themselves and give you dashboard warning lights, onboard diagnostics, and automated systems to let you know about potential problems before they become serious.

Communication Networks are Just as Complex

The communications networks we all rely on for our regular, digital lives are heading in the same direction.

As artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and connected services continue to expand, communications networks are becoming much more complex than they were just a few decades ago. Long-distance optical links connect data centers, businesses, and communications providers, carrying enormous volumes of information every second, while data travels through amplifiers, switches, routers, and optical transceivers at incredible speeds. It’s getting tougher to keep track of the health of the networks.

Network Diagnosis Takes Time

In the past, diagnosing any network issues often required specialized measurement equipment and dedicated testing procedures. Engineers could investigate faults manually, but the process could be time-consuming, especially as networks grew bigger and more complex.

… Unless They Diagnose Themselves?

NTT's latest research is looking to address this challenge by giving optical network equipment something that modern cars already have: the ability to continuously monitor its own condition.

A Smarter Digital Signal Processing Chip

The company has developed the world's first communications digital signal processing (DSP) chip capable of visualizing the condition of an entire optical transmission route while normal communications are taking place. In modern high-capacity networks, DSP chips already perform enormous amounts of signal processing—you could think of them as the brains of an optical transceiver, processing incoming signals and recovering the data they contain. What NTT has done is to add a new capability while still maintaining normal communications performance.

In the past, NTT has demonstrated the ways in which optical fiber links can be monitored without dedicated measurement equipment. Its research showed that it was possible to identify losses, gains, and other abnormalities along a fiber route by looking at the nature of the communications signals themselves. The only problem that got in the way was practicality: calculations required external computers and were not suitable for deployment inside commercial networking equipment. As a result, the monitoring system had to remain separate from the transceivers carrying the traffic.

NTT's aim since then has been to move that capability into the communications hardware itself. Here’s how it succeeded in doing that.

Reducing the Load

The company has worked to reduce the computational workload by a factor of 100, which allowed the monitoring capability to be implemented directly within an 800G (800 gigabits of data per second) coherent DSP chip.

The result is an optical transceiver that can transmit and receive data, while at the same time assessing the condition of the fiber route through which those signals travel. By analyzing the communications signals it already processes, the transceiver can identify the location of abnormalities across transmission distances of up to 1,000 kilometers. In effect, the transceiver has become part of the network's monitoring system, not just a way to carry traffic.

Easier Network Maintenance

This means easier times for network operators, with simplified maintenance and troubleshooting. Rather than having to rely on separate testing equipment, transceivers themselves can contribute information about the health of the network. Initial evaluations by NTT have shown almost no impact on transmission quality or power consumption, while maintaining interoperability with equipment from multiple vendors.

NTT believes that future communications networks will come to depend on monitoring capabilities that help operators understand the condition of the network in real time, locate developing faults, and manage infrastructure that spans vast distances. And it’s working to provide networks that can identify potential problems before they affect the services that people and businesses rely upon every day.

Innovating a Sustainable Future for People and Planet

For further information, please see this link:
https://group.ntt/en/newsrelease/2026/05/26/260526a.html

If you have any questions on the content of this article, please contact:

Public Relations
NTT Science and Core Technology Laboratory Group
https://tools.group.ntt/en/news/contact/index.php

Daniel O'Connor

Daniel O'Connor joined the NTT Group in 1999 when he began work as the Public Relations Manager of NTT Europe. While in London, he liaised with the local press, created the company's intranet site, wrote technical copy for industry magazines and managed exhibition stands from initial design to finished displays.

Later seconded to the headquarters of NTT Communications in Tokyo, he contributed to the company's first-ever winning of global telecoms awards and the digitalisation of internal company information exchange.

Since 2015 Daniel has created content for the Group's Global Leadership Institute, the One NTT Network and is currently working with NTT R&D teams to grow public understanding of the cutting-edge research undertaken by the NTT Group.