America
Faster internet soon to become a reality
New York, June 28
In a major breakthrough that
can make the internet superfast and cheap, researchers have
successfully increased the maximum power -- and therefore distance -- at
which optical signals can be sent through optical fibres.
The
advance has the potential to make the internet superfast by increasing
data transmission rates for the fibre optic cables -- which serve as the
backbone of the internet, cable, wireless and landline networks.
A
long-standing roadblock to increasing data transmission rates in
optical fibre has been that beyond a threshold power level, additional
power surge irreparably distorts the information travelling in the fibre
optic cable.
"Today's fibre optic systems are a little like
quicksand. With fibre optics, after a certain point, the more power you
add to the signal, the more distortion you get, in effect preventing a
longer reach," said corresponding author Nikola Alic from the Qualcomm
Institute at University of California - San Diego.
"Our approach
removes this power limit, which in turn extends how far signals can
travel in optical fibre without needing a repeater," Alic said.
In
lab experiments, the researchers successfully deciphered information
after it travelled a record-breaking 12,000 km through fibre optic
cables with standard amplifiers and no repeaters, which are electronic
regenerators.
The new findings effectively eliminate the need for
electronic regenerators placed periodically along the fibre link. The
breakthrough in this study relies on wideband "frequency combs" that the
researchers developed.
The frequency comb ensures that the
signal distortions called "Crosstalks" that arises between bundled
streams of information travelling long distances through the optical
fibre are predictable, and therefore, reversible at the receiving end of
the fibre.
"We have presented a method for leveraging the crosstalk to remove the power barrier for optical fibre," the authors said.
The research was published in the journal Science.