Superchannel fibre 50,000x faster than broadband?

TECHNOLOGY

Scientists at University College London (UCL) have recently discovered a way to send data at 1.125 terabits per second: 50,000 times the average ‘superfast’ broadband speed of 24 megabits per second. But it will take some time before this is available to a wider audience…

The speed was achieved by technique used to split wireless signals, which had not yet been used in fixed internet connections.15 pulses of light are sent simultaneously at different frequencies and captured by a special receiver. “This resulted in us achieving the greatest information rate ever recorded using a single receiver,” said Dr Robert Maher, who led the research. “The data rate we have achieved would allow the entire HD Game of Thrones series to be downloaded within one second.”

According to UCL Professor Polina Bayvel the new design could make home broadband speeds more than 10 times faster than current technology. UCL researchers are planning tests that will show whether the new technology can carry data across thousands of miles of fibre.

A few considerations

“The concept of superchannels is widely considered to be the road to follow to achieve very high transmission rate per channel. However, recent breakthroughs don’t mean the new technology is guaranteed to be widely available to consumer soon. For one thing, distance and signal deterioration mean consumers won’t have access to connection speeds at laboratory speeds.

“There are a few things we need to consider. A superchannel makes it possible to reuse existing laser sources operating at low speeds by combining them instead of developing optical sources and receivers which operate at higher speeds, which is especially difficult and probably won’t be possible in the coming years, based on existing technology. Super channel must use some advance signal processing be it for the encoding and decoding of the subcarrier signals. This is more complex than a single carrier approach.”

“What’s more, superchannel systems are not fully compliant with the existing grid allocation. Adoption would impact network equipment designs and require flexible grid allocation. The ‘superchannel’ approach is seen as scalable with reduced complexity, and it could eventually allow more flexibility to cope with traffic increase or bandwidth allocation on demand. We could consider using only a limited number of subcarriers to get a 200 Gb/s or 400 Gb/s channel without having to change the source and detector.”

The speed was achieved by technique used to split wireless signals, which had not yet been used in fixed internet connections.15 pulses of light are sent simultaneously at different frequencies and captured by a special receiver. “This resulted in us achieving the greatest information rate ever recorded using a single receiver,” said Dr Robert Maher, who led the research. “The data rate we have achieved would allow the entire HD Game of Thrones series to be downloaded within one second.”

According to UCL Professor Polina Bayvel the new design could make home broadband speeds more than 10 times faster than current technology. UCL researchers are planning tests that will show whether the new technology can carry data across thousands of miles of fibre.

A few considerations

“The concept of superchannels is widely considered to be the road to follow to achieve very high transmission rate per channel. However, recent breakthroughs don’t mean the new technology is guaranteed to be widely available to consumer soon. For one thing, distance and signal deterioration mean consumers won’t have access to connection speeds at laboratory speeds.

“There are a few things we need to consider. A superchannel makes it possible to reuse existing laser sources operating at low speeds by combining them instead of developing optical sources and receivers which operate at higher speeds, which is especially difficult and probably won’t be possible in the coming years, based on existing technology. Super channel must use some advance signal processing be it for the encoding and decoding of the subcarrier signals. This is more complex than a single carrier approach.”

“What’s more, superchannel systems are not fully compliant with the existing grid allocation. Adoption would impact network equipment designs and require flexible grid allocation. The ‘superchannel’ approach is seen as scalable with reduced complexity, and it could eventually allow more flexibility to cope with traffic increase or bandwidth allocation on demand. We could consider using only a limited number of subcarriers to get a 200 Gb/s or 400 Gb/s channel without having to change the source and detector.”