Researchers have set a new record for data transfer: 1 petabit per second

A team of scientists from Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) has set a new speed record for data transmission using fiber-optic cables described by existing compatible infrastructure.

rotating flow

As a reminder, 1 Petabet The equivalent of one million gigabits, which means that the speed achieved for this new record is about 100,000 times higher than that currently available to individuals in the best serviced areas in the world. until theUS space agency you won’t get that 400 Gbit/s on its network ESnet6 It will be published in 2023. According to the Japanese team, at a speed of 1 Pb / s, 10 million video streams can theoretically be broadcast simultaneously in 8K resolution.

Presented on the occasion ofInternational Conference on Laser and Electro-Optics 2022This new record included the use of several emerging technologies. The Optical fiber Four cores (glass tubes that transmit signals) were used instead of the usual tube, while the transmission bandwidth was boosted to an all-time high of 20 terahertz, thanks to a technology called D-Division Multiplexing. Wavelength (WDM).

This bandwidth consists of a total of 801 wavelength channels distributed over three bands: the commonly used C and L bands, in addition to the experimental S-band signal, the team reached a recording speed of 1.02 Pb/s, transmitting data over 51.7 km of fiber-optic cable.

Big advantages

This is not the first time it comes from scholars NTIC Exceeds the petabit threshold for data transfer. By December 2020, the team had set a record 1.01 Pb/s, using a single-core fiber-optic cable and 15 encrypted data. fashions “.

However, as impressive as this feat was, it required complex signal processing to decode the data, meaning that specialized integrated circuits would have to be developed and deployed to use such technology on a large scale.

The new approach is not only faster, but also has the advantage of transmitting data in only one mode per core, which can be read by existing systems. Best of all, because the quad-core fiber optic cable has the same diameter as a standard cable (0.125 mm), it must be compatible with existing infrastructure and manufacturing processes.