Researchers from Monash, Swinburne and RMIT universities have successfully tested and recorded Australia's fastest internet data speed, and that of the world, from a single optical chip -- capable of downloading 1000 high definition movies in a split second. Researchers have recorded the world's highest internet speed. The coming out of this technology will revolutionize the internet sector.
In light of the pressures being placed on the world's internet infrastructure, recently highlighted by isolation policies as a result of COVID-19, the research team led by Dr Bill Corcoran (Monash), Distinguished Professor Arnan Mitchell (RMIT) and Professor David Moss (Swinburne) were able to achieve a data speed of 44.2 Terabits per second (Tbps) from a single light source.
This technology has the capacity to support the high-speed internet connections of 1.8 million households in Melbourne.
Australia, at the same time, and billions across the world during peak periods.
Demonstrations of this magnitude are usually confined to a laboratory. But, for this study, researchers achieved these quick speeds using existing communications infrastructure where they were able to efficiently load-test the network.
This speed was achieved by 76.6 km long dark optical fibers in Melbourne. The prestigious Nature Communication Journal says it will revolutionize data optics and telecommunications as the fastest data.
Not only does this speed up the telecommunication network in Australia, but it also provides the Internet with the highest speed for households. Customers use Microcomb for this speed. The Micro Bomb is much smaller and lighter than the hardware currently used in telecommunications. It was viewed using existing resources.
This is the first time that Microcomb has been field tested. Internet use has increased as everyone is currently home due to coronavirus. It is remarkable that such research is being conducted at this time. This is likely to increase the use of microbombs worldwide in terms of bandwidth.
To illustrate the impact optical micro-combs have on optimising communication systems, researchers installed 76.6km of 'dark' optical fibres between RMIT's Melbourne City Campus and Monash University's Clayton Campus.
The optical fibres were provided by Australia's Academic Research Network.
Within these fibres, researchers placed the micro-comb -- contributed by Swinburne University, as part of a broad international collaboration -- which acts like a rainbow made up of hundreds of high quality infrared lasers from a single chip. Each 'laser' has the capacity to be used as a separate communications channel.
Researchers were able to send maximum data down each channel, simulating peak internet usage, across 4THz of bandwidth.
Distinguished Professor Mitchell said reaching the optimum data speed of 44.2 Tbps showed the potential of existing Australian infrastructure.
The future ambition of the project is to scale up the current transmitters from hundreds of gigabytes per second towards tens of terabytes per second without increasing size, weight or cost.
"Long-term, we hope to create integrated photonic chips that could enable this sort of data rate to be achieved across existing optical fibre links with minimal cost," Distinguished Professor Mitchell said.
"Initially, these would be attractive for ultra-high speed communications between data centres. However, we could imagine this technology becoming sufficiently low cost and compact that it could be deployed for commercial use by the general public in cities across the world.
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Professor Moss, Director of the Optical Sciences Centre at Swinburne University, said: "In the 10 years since I co-invented micro-comb chips, they have become an enormously important field of research.
"It is truly exciting to see their capability in ultra-high bandwidth fibre optic telecommunications coming to fruition. This work represents a world-record for bandwidth down a single optical fibre from a single chip source, and represents an enormous breakthrough for part of the network which does the heaviest lifting. Micro-combs offer enormous promise for us to meet the world's insatiable demand for bandwidth."
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