A team of international researchers say they’ve set a new world speed record for an industrial standard optical fiber that’s as thick as a human hair and contains a groundbreaking 19 cores.
All of the world’s internet traffic is carried through optical fibers 125 microns thick, connecting continents, data centers, mobile phone towers, satellite ground stations and, of course, our homes and businesses. To provide some context, the width of a thick human hair is 120 microns.
Researchers from Australia, Japan, Italy and the Netherlands used an optical fiber containing a groundbreaking 19 cores that each carry a signal to transmit data at 1.7 petabits per second (Pbit/s) over a cable measuring 41.6 miles (67 km) long. That’s the equivalent of carrying more than 10 million fast home internet connections running at full capacity.
While, technically, it’s not the fastest data transmission rate ever recorded – Scandinavian researchers clocked up 1.84 Pbit/s in 2022 – this technology is far closer to being implemented.
“Decades of optics research around the world has allowed the industry to push more and more data through single fibers,” said Simon Gross from Macquarie University, Sydney. “They’ve used different colors, different polarizations, light coherence and many other tricks to manipulate light.”
Key to the super-speedy transmission is the glass chip used in the fiber. Developed by Macquarie University, it meets the global standard for fiber size by ensuring that it can be adopted without requiring massive infrastructure change.
“We’ve created a compact glass chip with a wave guide pattern etched into it by 3D laser printing technology,” Gross said. “It allows feeding of signals into the 19 individual cores of the fiber with uniform low losses. Other approaches are limited in the number of cores and result in the loss of too much light, which reduces the efficiency of the transmission system.”
Most current optical fibers have a single core that carries multiple light signals, which means it’s limited to a few terabits per second because of interference between the signals. While it is possible to increase the thickness of existing fibers, they’d be less flexible and costly to alter.
“We could increase the capacity by using thicker fibers,” Gross said. “But thicker fibers would be less flexible, more fragile, less suitable for long-haul cables, and would require massive reengineering of optical fiber infrastructure. We could just add more fibers. But each fiber adds equipment overhead and cost, and we’d need a lot more fibers.”
The researchers say that their cable offers a great solution to providing greater data flow at a reduced cost. They also believe that the 19-core fiber has applications in a range of fields.
“The underlying patented technology has many applications, including finding planets orbiting distant stars, disease detection, even identifying damage in sewage pipes,” said Michael Withford of Macquarie University.
The researchers’ findings were presented at the 46th Optical Fiber Communication Conference.
Source: Macquarie University
