Recently, a team of professors and researchers from the renowned universities, Dr. Bill Corcoran (Monash University), Arnan Mitchell (RMIT University) and David J. Moss, Mengxi Tan, Xingyuan Xu, Jiayang Wu (Swinburne University of Technology) have issued their latest joint study in which they have claimed that from a single light source they have managed to achieve the highest internet speed of ‘44.2 Tbps’ with the help of Australia’s national broadband network in both laboratory and reality as well.
We all know that the COVID-19 pandemic has created a critical situation globally, and common space for teleworking or remotely, something that mostly depends on human capacities to deal with communication & information technologies and, of course, the internet connection as well.
Apart from this, if you have ever moved to work abroad, then you might have wondered once which countries have the fastest internet? The countries with the fastest internet speed are Taiwan, Singapore, Sweden, Denmark, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, and Switzerland. But, soon, this list may change, as Australia has recorded the highest internet speed ever with 44.2 Tbps, as we told earlier.
Replacing Lasers With Micro-combs
The researchers and engineers at Monash University, Swinburne, and the Royal Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, have developed a chip that could one day become a part of our internet infrastructure and will be able to offer millions of users, extremely high-speed internet connections, even during the bad situations and national emergencies as well.
The researchers have clearly stated that they have successfully tested their small optical device to achieve a total speed of 44.2 Terabits per second (Tbps), which is the highest internet speed recorded from a single light source.
Here, the researchers have used the ‘comb of optical frequencies,’ instead of fiber optic cable, and they have named this as “Micro-combs.” Though, this technology is not exactly something new, as the concept has been around for a decade. But with the increasing pressure on our data centers, it has been showing its potential to miniaturize and boost the technologies behind the internet connections.
“Moreover, these ‘Micro-combs’ have become a center of attraction for the researchers from several fields, since they were discovered,” said, David Moss, the Director of the Center for Optical Sciences at the Swinburne University of Technology.
The Micro-combs are optical frequency combs that are based on micro-cavity resonators, and they have shown notable promise in accomplishing the current requirements. In short, according to the researchers, an important benefit of this chip is the ability to make the most of the existing infrastructure to meet the demand expected in the coming years.
Testing of this type of experiment is generally remained limited to the laboratory only, but in this case, the researchers have tested this experiment across 76.6 kilometers of fiber optics between RMIT’s Melbourne campus and Monash University’s Clayton campus; as the connections belonging to the “Australian Lightwave Infrastructure Research Testbed (ALIRT).”
By using the large modulation format of 64 QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation), a low comb-free spectral range (FSR) spacing of 48.9 GHz, and the telecommunications C-band, the researchers have managed to achieve these results.
Moreover, the Australian researchers have stated that they have used this ‘Micro-comb’ to replace 80 different lasers for a single crystal waveform generator, which is minor and lighter than the existing devices.
The signal was recovered by utilizing a common offline digital signal processing (DSP) flow at the receiver. As in the back-to-back configuration, the researchers stated that they were able to measure a signal quality impending 18.5 dB, dropping to near 17.5 dB while transmitting the fully tempered comb over the test links.
In short, the device acts like a rainbow that is made up of hundreds of high-quality infrared lasers, and each laser has the ability to be used as a separate communication channel. In tests, the maximum supported for each channel was sent through 4 THz bandwidth.
As from the below graph, you can see three types of circle points, blue, red, and green; this graph will show you the bit-error ratio, spectral efficiency, and GMI (Generalised Mutual Information) for transmission experiment.
Here, the blue points show the performance of the channels in a B2B configuration, while the red points show the performance tested in 75 km of in-lab spooled fibre, and at last comes the green one, which shows the practical performance through the 76.6 km installed fibre link in the metropolitan area.
“We hope to implement this technology soon in the near future through existing fiber optic links at a minimal cost that will allow us to achieve the data rates of this range,” said one of the researchers, Arnan Mitchell.
Australia Beat the Competition
According to the reports, Australia is not the solo country who is working in this field, as if you don’t know, the DTU (Technical University of Denmark) was the first to set the previous record in 2014. In 2009 the researchers at DTU (Technical University of Denmark) managed to reach terabit per second (Tbps); after two years the researchers at DTU managed to reach 26 Tbps, but, it’s not the ending, as this same team once again exceeded their own mark by achieving 43 Tbps.
Now, it might be clear for you guys that how competitive this field is and how the researcher from different universities from different countries are constantly trying to break the mark recorded previously with better efficiency and technologies.
After Denmark, now Australia has managed to break the record of 43 Tbps with the merest lead, as they have managed to establish a new mark at 44.2 Tbps, a lead of 1.2 Tbps. As we all know, Australia will not remain at the peak point for a long time, as we all know that this number will continue to rise over the next few years.
Moreover, to explain the speed achieved in this test, the researchers at the Swinburne University of Technology has said, with this much internet speed, a user can download more than 1000 HD movies in a fraction of a second.
If everything goes well, then data centers will be the first one to adopt this chip to provide faster communication to all its users. And in just a few years, this revolutionary chip may also replace the transmitters that offer data at a hundred gigabytes per second, which is quite mere in front of this technology.
So, what do you think about this? Share all your views and thoughts in the comment section below.
You can follow us on Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook for daily Cybersecurity and hacking news updates.
Also Read:
How a Proxy can Allow you to Take Back Your Internet Freedom
Internet of Things Can Revolutionize and Benefit Many Industries
