German researchers demonstrate single laser 26 Tb/s transmission rates

[gary]

BBC News is reporting on an article that has appeared in Nature Photonics
where researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany
have demonstrated using an optical Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) encoding/decoding
scheme to transmit data from a single laser at rates up to 26 Tera bits / second
over 50km of optical fiber. A new world record for use with a single laser.

In the BBC article, one of the co-authors of the paper, Wolfgang Freude, says that
previously other researchers had demonstrated transmission speeds of 100 Tb/s using
370 lasers and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing techniques. However, as
Freude points out, 370 lasers is expensive and consumes several kilowatts of power.
The Karlsruhe team claim to now be able to create comparable data rates from a single
laser using exceedingly short pulses.

With applications such as cloud-computing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing) and 4K video streaming (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4K_resolution) set to explode,
the world demand for faster data transmission rates is not about to slow anytime
soon.

BBC article here -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13469924

Abstract of article in Nature Photonics here -
http://www.nature.com/nphoton/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nphoton.2011.74.html

[renormalised]

Only one "small" problem with this, Gary. How powerful was the laser they used to transmit the data?? It's most likely not something that will translate into anything commercially useful for some time.

[gary]

Hi Carl,

I couldn't spot a quote of the laser power used, but I did find a reference to the
commercial laser used by the same investigators in a previous experiment
where they used a single laser to achieve 10.8 Tbits/s down an optical fiber.
That laser was quoted as having an average output power of less than 5mW.

Specifically, I noted one of the research team's commercial partners is a
company called Time-Bandwidth Products (http://www.time-bandwidth.com/) that specializes in picosecond and femtosecond lasers.

They claim -



More details of their Ergo-XG laser can be fond here -
http://www.time-bandwidth.com/product/view/id/34

It mentions -


One of the Nature paper's author's, D. Hillerkuss, is available for contact here -
http://www.nature.com/nphoton/foxtrot/svc/authoremailform?doi=10.1038/nphoton.2011.74&file=/nphoton/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nphoton.2011.74.html&title=26+Tbit+s-1+line-rate+super-channel+transmission+utilizing+all-optical+fast+Fourier+transform+proc essing&author=D.+Hillerkuss

The BBC quotes one of the co-authors, Wolfgang Freude, as conceding the idea
of the optical FFT is a complex one. However, he goes onto say, that he
is convinced "that it will come into its own as the demand for ever-higher data rates
drives innovation."

He then says -


So it could be alluding to the fact that in order to viably commercialize the scheme,
one needs to design and fab a suitable photonics device.

I note one of their partners is Micram (http://www.micram.com/), a
fab-less ASIC provider in Germany that designs silicon for fiber-optical
networking and that another partner is Agilent, a world-leading photonics
manufacturer.

Thus the scheme may not be that far "out there" and certainly in the communications
research world many things progress pretty rapidly to commercialization compared
to other areas of endeavor, such as, for example, medical research. :thumbsup:

[renormalised]

That's true. You here them say..."It'll be another 5-10 years before procedure 'x' or medicine 'y' will be available to the public", and then that's the last you here of it. 5-10 years passes by and there's still nothing to show for it. Might work too good for the big pharmaceuticals...can't cure everyone and get rid of a disease when it's too profitable to just "manage" it:):P

[Tandum]

This is why they only have to lay optic fibre once. The technology on each end of it is what get's better.