Breakthrough laser achieves data transfer speed of 26Tb/s
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Researchers have set a new data transfer record of just 26Tb/s using a single laser. The laser was constructed at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany and co author, Professor Wolfgang Fruede, pictured, has published his findings in Nature Photonics.
The transfer speed of 26 terabits of data - equivalent to 700 DVDs – down a fibre optic cable was achieved with a single laser by sending short pulses which contained a number of colours of light in a 'frequency comb'. When the short pulse of light was sent through optical fibre, the colours formed 325 different colours each corresponding to its own data set. A 'fast Fourier transform' was used to separate the colours of light in a laser beam, each encoded with its own information.
The Fourier transform optically extracts the colours from an input beam on the basis of when the different elements of the beam arrive. This is achieved by splitting the beam into different paths that arrive at different times, then recombining them on a detector. This process allows data arriving at different times to be organised efficiently.
In an attempt to perfect higher data transfer rates, Prof Freude said his team also demonstrated an experiment transferring 100Tb/s, however, this involved the use of 370 lasers.
"The problem was they didn't have just one laser, they had something like 370 lasers, which is an incredibly expensive thing," he said. If you can imagine 370 lasers, they fill racks and consume several kilowatts of power."
According to Prof Freude, the new technology could be used on a chip as the demand for higher data rates increases. He concluded: 'Think of all the tremendous progress in silicon photonics,' he said. 'Nobody could have imagined 10 years ago that nowadays it would be so common to integrate relatively complicated optical circuits on to a silicon chip.'
