The fastest transmission of information between a laser and a single optical chip system is now at 1.8 petabits per second. That's much more than the amount of traffic that crosses the internet each second.
The average download speed in the US is 167 megabits per second. To get up to 1 petabit you need 1 million megabits and 1000 megabits.
The amount of data that can be transmitted in a second is serious.
The data transfer system is built around a custom-design optical chip, which splits the light from a singlelaser into hundreds of frequencies. The name of the setup is a Frequency comb because the frequencies are isolated at fixed distances.
The huge transmission rates are achieved by each tooth on a Frequency comb sending its own burst of data The same number of 1s and 0s would be carried by a thousand lasers.
"What is special about this chip is that it produces a frequency comb with ideal characteristics for fiber-optical communications," says a scientist.
It has high optical power and is interesting for advanced optical communications.
The researchers split the fiber-optic cable into 37 separate sections and then split them into different frequencies. It was important to have enough data sent in parallel.
The data was stored in the light signals using a process called modulation, which adjusts the height, strength, and directions of light waves to store the 1s and 0s.
This is a proof of concept because computers aren't capable of generating so much data at the same time. Artificial 'dummy' data was used to make sure the system worked the way it was supposed to.
Extra components are needed in the chip. The system will be much faster and less of a power draw once this is done.
"Our solution provides a potential for replacing hundreds of thousands of the lasers located at Internet hubs and data centers, all of which consume power and generate heat," says electrical engineer Leif Katsuo Oxenlwe.
There is an opportunity for us to help achieve an internet that leaves a smaller climate footprint.
Even higher data transmission rates should be possible in the future, as a result of the researchers' use of a Computational model.
The models show that rates of up to 100 petabits per second can be achieved by splitting the light frequencies and adding more amplification. There is no need to lose the data's reliability.
Getting up to that stage is dependent on improvements in other areas of computing and internet infrastructure, but the underlying technologies are not too far away from what we are already using.
Katsuo Oxenlwe believes that the more components we can integrate in the chip, the more efficient the whole transmitter will be. The optical transmitter will be very efficient.
The research has appeared in a journal.
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