Internet Data Transmission Record Shattered by Danish and Swedish Researchers - 1.84 Petabits per second

BiG StroOnZ · October 23, 2022

Summary

A team of researchers from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden has managed to break the data transmission record, using something called a frequency comb, which is a photonics chip. The team of researchers hit a data transmission speed of an insane 1.84 Petabits per second over a distance of 7.9 kilometres—or 4.9 miles using standard fibre optic lines. 1 petabit corresponds to 1 million gigabits. The team credits the characteristics of the frequency comb generated on its chip for the breakthrough, though it wasn't designed for the purpose.

Quotes

Quote

In the experiment, the researchers succeeded in transmitting 1.8 Pbit/s, which corresponds to twice the total global Internet traffic. The DTU team's frequency comb was made by Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden and it breaks down the infrared laser that's being used to transmit the data, into a rainbow spectrum, where each colour corresponds to a frequency equivalent. This allows multiple streams of data to be encoded with data, before being re-integrated and sent as a single infrared laser signal over the fibre. According to DTU, without the frequency comb, they would've needed more than a thousand lasers to achieve the same speeds using state-of-the-art commercial equipment. The team at DTU expects to be able to hit speeds of up to 100 Petabit per second in the future.

My thoughts

It always amazes me to see how much progress internet speeds make in such a short amount of time. To think that these researchers were able to transmit the amount of data equating to more than the total volume of global internet traffic that's being sent every second is quite astonishing. I don't even have that fast internet, about 230 Mbps down, and I think it's really fast from what I used to get in another city I lived in that had a monopoly on internet service; there the max speed was only 50 Mbps down. I couldn't imagine having fiber or something like this eventually. Apparently, this isn't the longest transmission, that record is held by a team of Japanese researchers who transmitted a 319 Terrabit per second datastream over a distance of 3,001 kilometres —or 1,864 miles. Even that record is quite incredible, and at the distance it was done at. Although, they did use signal amplifiers every 70 kilometres—or 43.5 miles to reach that distance. Regardless, it will be interesting to see if any of these technologies can be implemented in the future to provide higher transfer speeds, and that hopefully they aren't constrained to lab research.

Sources

https://www.dtu.dk/english/news/all-news/new-data-transmission-record?id=213f1735-036d-44c9-b229-d25d74dd3f02

https://www.techpowerup.com/300182/internet-data-transmission-record-shattered-by-danish-researchers

https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/21/petabit_data_transmission_record/