Faster Internet awaits us in the near future, researchers say at Qualcomm Institute say.
At UC San Diego’s Qualcomm Institute, researchers have not only made fiber optic data transmissions faster, but they completely out-done themselves. Researches have increased the power of optical signals almost twenty times of what we currently have.
You shouldn’t be afraid anymore that our fibre optic networks can’t hold all that data being trasnferred, and that the system will overload.
While researching, at one point, the data was being distorted because it travelled so fast, for so long, and researches were needed to use pricey electronic regenerators in order to boost the signal. But they seem to have solved this annoying nuisance.
Nikola Alic, a corresponding author from the Qualcomm Institute at University of California – San Diego had this to say – ” Today’s fibre optic systems are a little like quicksand. With fibre optics, after a certain point, the more power you add to the signal, the more distortion you get, in effect preventing a longer reach.”
Researchers at Qualcomm Institute have managed to send data over a record-breaking 12.000 kilometres through fiber optic without using the expensive electronic regenerators, and the data received wasn’t distorted and could be used without problems.
“Our approach removes this power limit, which in turn extends how far signals can travel in optical fibre without needing a repeater.” Alic has noted.
Why is this possible? Because of advancements in wideband frequency combs that researches have managed to further develop at the Qualcomm Institute.
This new advancements in frequency combs ensure that the signal distortion called Crosstalks that appears once streams of information are bundled together through long distances, can be predicted, and thus, fully reversible, at the receiving end of the fibre optic!
This is great news for those of us stuck in with lousy internet. But a question arises. Are we going to have to pay more for a faster internet, or prices will remain the same?