255 Tbps; Researchers from Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) in the Netherlands and the University of Central Florida (CREOL) in the USA reported in a publication in Nature Photonics the successful transmission of a record-breaking 255 Terabits/s (per second) of data through a new type of fiber, which allows 21 times more bandwidth than current data communication networks.
As stated in a relevant announcement by the Dutch university, this specific type of fiber could be a solution to the issue of the increasing need for bandwidth.
Due to the proliferation of Internet services and the emergence of increasingly demanding datacenter networks, the demand for bandwidth is expected to continue to grow exponentially. To transmit more data over today's glass optical fibers, one option is to increase the power of the signals to compensate for the losses inherent in using the glass from which the fiber is made. However, this produces unwanted photonic nonlinear effects, which limit the amount of information that can be recovered after transmission.
The team of researchers from the two universities, led by Dr. Chigo Okonkwo, assistant professor in the Electro-Optical Communications (ECO) research group at TU/e, and Dr. Rodrigo Amezcua Correa, research assistant professor in micro-structured fibers at CREOL, has demonstrated the potential of a new type of fiber to increase transmission capacity and potentially address the upcoming so-called “capacity crunch.” The new fiber has seven different cores through which light can travel, instead of the one in today’s advanced fibers. In comparison, this is the difference between a seven-lane highway and a one-way street. The paper also introduces two additional rectangular dimensions for data transmission – like three cars driving one on top of the other in the same lane. Through the combination of these two methods, transmission performance (gross transmission throughput) of the order of 255 Terabits/s is achieved – more than 20 times the current standard of 4-8 Terabits/s.
As reported in a related article by Extreme Tech, such performance would allow speeds of 32 terabytes per second - sufficient to transfer a one GB movie in 0.03 milliseconds, or transfer the entire contents of a one terabyte hard drive in 31 milliseconds. Indicatively, the article emphasizes that 255 Terabits/ s corresponds to the total traffic observed on the Internet during peak hours.
Source: naftemporiki.gr
