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View Full Version : 26 terabites/second ~ Fastest single laser transmission achieved



Rasa1111
May 28th, 2011, 05:50 PM
Wow!
26 TB's per second!
or about 6500 DVDs downloaded in an instant





analysts believe that by the middle of the decade we’ll be well into the terabit Ethernet.
In an amazing feat of electrical engineering, scientists have managed to set a new landmark in optical communications by transmitting data at the remarkable speed of 26 terabits per second, or about 6500 DVDs downloaded in an instant, all using a single transmitting laser.

Read more: http://www.zmescience.com/research/fastest-single-laser-transmission-4143545/#ixzz1NfN1jIqO

http://www.zmescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/1861781.jpg

uses very brief but broad-spectrum laser pulses to send data. Wavelength division multiplexing [WDM, center] packs in bits by using several frequencies of light at once. Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing [OFDM, right] y. does the same, but uses overlapping frequencies to make better use of the available spectrum.
The research was lead by scientists from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, in Germany, who published the research paper in Nature Photonics (http://www.nature.com/nphoton/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nphoton.2011.74.html).
For the device, German scientists worked upon an existing and fairly common technique used in wireless communications called orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OFDM).

The technique starts by encoding data onto carrier waves whose frequencies overlap quite a bit, then combining those waves to create a new waveform. “Now, instead of having four transmitters, you have one transmitter,” Juerg Leuthold, a professor at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, explains.

What makes the OFDM transmission technique so popular, mostly, is that it uses a much broader data transmission spectrum, meaning it have a much better efficiency when real data transmission speeds are concerned. The adding and extracting of the waves is done through a mathematical process called the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fft) and its inverse.

“This is so awfully fast that there is no electronic receiver that could detect it,” Leuthold said, explaining a major problem the team had to overcome. The issue was solved by the German scientists who used optical FFT device (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_analyzer) instead of an electronic one.

While the transfer speed achieved is indeed remarkable, other much larger transmission speeds have achieved albeit with multiple lasers. NEC Laboratories, of Princeton, N.J., for instance, presented a paper at the annual Optical Fiber Communication Conference (http://www.ofcnfoec.org/home.aspx) in March showing a rate of 101.7 terabits per second, also using OFDM, but with 370 lasers, each transmitting at 294 gigabits per second.

One of the NEC researchers, Tim Wong, has learned about Leuthold’s work and believes it is very well done and quite significant, however, he states that the multiple laser arrangement from NEC has a better spectral efficiency, meaning a much bigger useful bits capacity.

NEC researchers performed a trial with telecom carrier Verizon last year in which they were able to reach rates of 1 Tb/s over 3560 km of fiber. The Karlsruhe researchers have so far only managed to test the single laser across 50 km of fiber, but Leuthold hopes he’ll be able to test it across a much broader distance in the future.
Much of today’s equipment works at 10 or 40 Gb/s, and analysts believe that by the middle of the decade we’ll be well into the terabit Ethernet.


http://www.zmescience.com/research/fastest-single-laser-transmission-4143545/#ixzz1NfNQn7QS



Craziness. :popcorn:

silex89
May 28th, 2011, 06:16 PM
I saw that in a local newspaper in the city I live.... That's ridiculously fast!!

Rasa1111
May 28th, 2011, 06:30 PM
I saw that in a local newspaper in the city I live.... That's ridiculously fast!!


lol, yeah it is.
and they can get even faster using multiple lasers! O_o

Nyromith
May 28th, 2011, 06:34 PM
I only hope it won't be used as a weapon against Personal Computing, if you know what I mean.

Rasa1111
May 28th, 2011, 07:05 PM
I only hope it won't be used as a weapon against Personal Computing, if you know what I mean.

Yeah no doubt.
Wouldn't surprise me though.

I wonder if this will change the game of encryption?
Will it make it possible to crack "uncrackable" encryption algorithms?

cgroza
May 28th, 2011, 07:30 PM
26 TB/s?
Dang, I need a better LAN port.

pimentel28
May 28th, 2011, 07:37 PM
Now if only I could have those speeds for gaming and downloading 6-month Ubuntu updates xD

red_Marvin
May 28th, 2011, 08:21 PM
I wonder if this will change the game of encryption?
Will it make it possible to crack "uncrackable" encryption algorithms?
No, encryption does not depend on transmission speed.

SoFl W
May 28th, 2011, 08:26 PM
I can remember using 300bps modems (AND WE LIKED IT!:-&) Amazing.


I only hope it won't be used as a weapon against Personal Computing, if you know what I mean.
With everything good comes a way to do something evil with it.

Barrucadu
May 28th, 2011, 11:46 PM
Just to clarify the thread, it's 26 terabits (Tb) per second, not 26 terabytes (TB) per second - which would be a significantly greater achievement. That's about 700 DVDs in a second, not 6500.
The article linked to in the OP is incorrect.

Dustin2128
May 29th, 2011, 02:23 AM
The future's going to be awesome. Of course, the telecos will still somehow say that you can't receive laser transmissions in your area, then charge you a huge amount for some shoddy 6Mbit ADSL.