If you’re old enough to remember the age of the dialup internet, you’ll remember that theoretically the highest achievable download speed on a standard 56K fax modem used to be 7kB/s. A simple mp3 song took ages to download, and viewing movies online was unthinkable.
Those days are long gone. Optical cable internet and DSL connections provide the average internet user with speed up to 24 Mbps. Evidently the internet has come a long way from the fax modem era. However the thirst for higher data transfer rates is an unquenchable one. And recently the French wing of Bell Labs, a research and development organization of Alcatel-Lucent, has achieved record data transfer speeds on optical transmission lines.
Bell Labs employed 155 lasers, each transferring date at a speed of 100 Gigabits per second and each operating at different frequencies. This maneuver tremendously enhanced the performance of Wavelength Division Multiplexing technology, which enables a single fiber optic to carry multiple lasers of different wavelengths.
Repeaters, devices used to maintain signal strength and prevent data loss, were placed at 90 kilometer intervals; this distance is 20% greater than the one usually used on such a network. Needless to say, this provided an even greater challenge.
The new technology which researchers at Bell Labs used was increasing capacity by interfacing advanced digital signal processors with coherent detection. This in turn, increased the number of light sources introduced into a single fiber – a step that made it possible to acquire details for a greater number of properties of light than the method commonly applied.
The 155 lasers were used to transfer data over a distance of 7000 kilometers, approximately the distance between Chicago and Paris. Put simply, in only one second 15.5 Terabits of travelled a distance of 7000 kilometers; at that speed, 400 DVD’s can be downloaded at Paris from Chicago. For everyday people who use regular broadband internet connections, the speeds achieved by Bell Labs are simply amazing.
While consumers like us are still years away from this technology bringing mindboggling speeds to our personal computers, Bell Labs continue their hard work in fiber optics and trying to break their own records.
*The Bell Labs’ press release on their breakthrough can be found here.
