London: Engineers have smashed the world’s fastest data transmission rate with a speed a fifth faster than the previous record.
The team at the University College London (UCL) hit a rate of 178 terabits a second, which is similar to downloading every title on Netflix in less than a second.
The former record belonged to experts at Japan’s National Institute for Communications Technology, who reached a data speed of 172 terabits per second in April.
The London-based researchers achieved this honor by sending data through a much wider wavelengths than typically used in optical fibers – traditional infrastructures use up to 9 Terahertz (THz), whereas the team used 16.8THz.
The team began their path to fame by combining different amplifier technologies that can boost the signal power over a wider bandwidth and then maximized speed by developing new Geometric Shaping (GS) constellations (patterns of signal combinations that make best use of the phase, brightness and polarization properties of the light), manipulating the properties of each individual wavelength.
The researchers chose this technique because it can be added to current infrastructures cost-effectively – only the amplifiers located on optical routes would need to be upgraded.
This method would run just a little over $20,000, while installing new optical cables would cost $589,000.
The new record, demonstrated in a UCL lab, is a fifth faster than the previous world record held by a team in Japan.
