An international group of scientists led by British colleagues broke their own record for data transfer speed over conventional fiber. Previously, they achieved data transfer at the level of 302 Tbit/s, while the new mark is fixed at 402 Tbit/s. What’s important about this achievement is that the experiment used regular store-bought fiber, which promises to improve the speed of existing networks.
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Despite the progress achieved in the field of optical communications, bandwidth requirements are growing both from companies and authorities, and from ordinary citizens. This issue can be resolved at a cost, but everyone would like to avoid additional costs. The solution proposed by scientists lies precisely in this plane – throughput can be increased without changing the infrastructure, although equipment for transmission and reception will obviously have to be used new. But this clearly cannot be compared with the costs of laying new optical transmission lines.
Researchers from Aston University, the Japanese National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) and Nokia Bell Labs in the USA are building their proposal on the basis of expanding data transmission ranges. Traditionally, optical fiber operated on wave bands C and L. Then the researchers included two more bands in the service: E and S. Finally, in the new work they used two more bands – O and U. The latter became the most difficult to implement, because there are no corresponding ones on sale receivers and transmitters. A team of scientists from the UK had to independently develop and produce the equipment.
Dr Phillips, from Aston University, said: “This discovery could help increase the capacity of a single fibre, giving the world a more efficient system. The newly developed technology is expected to make a significant contribution to expanding the capacity of optical communications infrastructure as future data services rapidly increase demand.”