Although the speed of the internet has been progressively increasing in recent years, it always seems insufficient. This problem could be solved with a photonic chip that transmits 1.84 petabits of data per second through a fiber optic cable.
A team of engineers from the Technical University of Denmark in Copenhagen and Chalmers University of Technology broke the speed record for data transmission using an optical chip.
Specifically, the data was being transferred at a rate of 1.84 petabits per second, which would be almost double the total Internet traffic per second.
As if to have a more complete idea of this technology, it is equivalent to having enough bandwidth to be able to download it 230 million photos in seconds.
This achievement represents an unprecedented advance in data transmission through optical fiber. Asbjørn engineer Arvad Jørgensen, of the Technical University of Denmark, and his team of Swedish and Japanese researchers, have found this solution that could reach speeds of up to 100 petabits per second.
This type of technology using photonic chips holds great promise for optical data transfer, as the processor and the transport medium work with light waves.
The technique the engineers developed is to emit an infrared laser on a chip that splits light into hundreds of different colors or frequencies.
By modulating the amplitude, phase and polarization of each of these frequencies, it is possible to encode the data in the light before recombining the frequencies into a single beam and transferring it over optical fiber.
A scalable solution
Leif Katsuo Oxenløwe, professor and author of the study, explains that the solution they developed “is scalable, both in terms of creating many frequencies and splitting the chip into many spatial copies and then of optical amplification and use as parallel sources with which we can transmit data “.
The researcher adds that, although “the copies of the chip have to be amplified, we do not lose its qualities, which we use for spectrally efficient data transmission”.
Jørgensen, co-author of the research, explained to the popular scientific journal New Scientist that the data transmission of 1.84 petabits was done through a 7.9 kilometer fiber cable.
To do this, they used a single photonic chip with a technology that transforms optical components into computer chips to split a data stream into multiple separate channels.
The engineers first divided the transmission into 37 sections for each fiber optic cable core, then divided the 37 sections into 223 data in the electromagnetic spectrum.
They transmitted all the data at once over a nearly 5-mile cable, eliminating a lot of interference that slows down the optical systems.
While it’s not the fastest alternative – other systems reach 10.66 petabits – it’s interesting for its miniature. According to the engineering team, their system could transfer as much data as 8,251 devices currently do.
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Source: Clarin
