Researchers achieved a record-breaking fiber optic data transfer speed of 402 terabits per second (Tbps), roughly 1.6 million times faster than typical home broadband speeds.
Scientists at Aston University in the UK achieved the new speeds by taking advantage of all the wavelength bands available in commercially available fibre optic cables – most fibre optic broadband connections only use one or two bands. They outlined their method in a technical report published by Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT).
The new record is 25% faster than the previous record set by the same team of scientists in March, which achieved speeds of 301 Tbps using four of the six wavelength bands on a fiber optic cable.
“This discovery will help increase the capacity of a single optical fiber, giving the world more powerful systems,” Ian Phillips, a teaching fellow in electrical and computer engineering at Aston University, said in a statement. “As demand for data services grows rapidly in the coming years, this newly developed technology is expected to make a major contribution to expanding the capacity of optical communications infrastructure.”
To achieve this new record, the research team built the world’s first optical transmission system to cover all six wavelength bands used in fiber optic communications, including O, E, S, C, L and U. These refer to different wavelengths in the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, which fall between 1,260 and 1,675 nanometers (nm). For comparison, visible light lies in the 400-700 nm range on the spectrum.
Related: Fiber optic data speeds soar to 301 Tbps — 1.2 million times faster than home broadband connections
Most of the fiber-optic connections currently on the market use portions of the C-band and L-band, which range from 1,530 nm to 1,625 nm, to transmit data because these are the most stable segments and the least amount of data is lost during transmission. But as network congestion increases, these bands will eventually become saturated and new bands will need to be used, the researchers said in their report.
In the past, the S-band, which is adjacent to the C-band and occupies the segment from 1,460 nm to 1,530 nm, has also been used in combination with other bands in “wavelength division multiplexing” (WDM) systems to achieve much higher speeds.
In previous studies, scientists stabilized the connection using the E-band section. Normally, when transmitting in this region, data loss rises to extremely high levels, five times higher than in the C-band and L-band regions. This is because fiber optic cables are easily exposed to hydroxyl (OH) molecules in the ground, which can enter the tube and disrupt the connection.
The new study went a step further, developing a new device that can also utilize O- and U-band wavelengths. Specifically, the scientists developed a device to boost the U-band portion of the signal. They also used a commercially available amplifier to boost the O-band signal.
What’s more, this speed was achieved over standard, commercially available fiber optic cable, so there’s no need to install special cables to take advantage of this speed.