The speed record for the data transmission has been smashed once again with only a single light source and an optical chip, as reported first by New Atlas.
The team behind the record transmitted data at a blazing rate of 1.85 petabits per second (Pbit/s), or nearly twice the volume of internet traffic per second!
New Speed Record
It is worth noting that one petabit equals 1 million gigabits. The light source is a custom-designed optical chip that can produce a rainbow spectrum of several colors, or various frequencies, using the light from a single infrared laser.
As a result, a single chip can multiply a single laser's single frequency into hundreds of frequencies.
The fact that this new speed record was achieved with only one light source and one optical device is even more astounding. Infrared laser light is split into hundreds of various frequencies, or colors, by a device known as a frequency comb.
After combining these frequencies into a single beam and transferring it through an optical cable, data can then be encoded into the light by modifying its amplitude, polarization, and phase.
Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and Chalmers University of Technology researchers used the system in experiments to transport data at 1.84 Pbit/s, encoded in 223 wavelength channels, down an optical fiber that was 7.9 km (4.9 mi) long and had 37 distinct cores.
This system may be able to manage the whole bandwidth of the internet, which is predicted to be just around 1 Pbit/s, at once and still have the capacity for expansion.
Scalable Solution
The previous record for data transfer speed, 1.02 Pbit/s, which was only established in May of this year, is dramatically surpassed by this one. Similar to the one employed in the new study, an earlier optical device design was capable of 44 terabits per second by the middle of 2020, as per New Atlas.
According to the team behind the new microprocessor, smashing records is far from over. The researchers predict that the device will eventually be able to transmit data at astounding speeds of up to 100 Pbit/s using a computer model.
"The reason for this is that our solution is scalable - both in terms of creating many frequencies and in terms of splitting the frequency comb into many spatial copies and then optically amplifying them, and using them as parallel sources with which we can transmit data," Professor Leif Katsuo Oxenløwe, lead author of the study, said in a press release statement.
"Although the comb copies must be amplified, we do not lose the qualities of the comb, which we utilize for spectrally efficient data transmission."
The researchers also developed a computational model to investigate theoretically the fundamental potential for data transmission using a single chip that was the same as the semiconductor utilized in the experiment.
The calculations revealed tremendous scope for expanding the solution, according to the team.
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Written by Joaquin Victor Tacla
