Scientists Double Optical Fiber Transmission Capacity

ms writes: "Yesterday golem.de reported that the Optical Communication and High-Frequency Engineering Group at the University of Paderborn (Germany) claims to have made a technology practical which doubles the transmission capacity of optical fibers to 80 GBit/s. In their so-called "polarization division multiplex data transmission system" they don't only send one but two mutually orthogonal light waves through the fiber. They say the only big problem was the dispersal of the light waves which limits the data rate. Additional they had to fight against the phenomena that the polarization direction of the light waves changes while it goes through the fiber. Now, after two years of research, they invented an "automatic optical compensator of polarization mode dispersion" which fights both the limitations. With this gadget they were able to send data at a rate of twice 40 GBit/s (that's 85,899,345,920 Bps) over a test-line of 212 km. And "only the available equipment limited distance and data rate". As we all know, optical fibers build the (cronically overloaded) backbone of our beloved Net. (BTW: That's Net., not .Net!)" Here's the babelfish translation, too.

Comments

Bringing new meaning to the term Collision?

[MrResistor]

I don't know how much of a problem particle collisions are for photons, and it's probably a rare occurence, but it seems like the probablility would increase with the frequency...

IANAPE (I am not a photonics expert), but that was the first thing that popped into my head.

Re:Dark fiber

[taliver]

Look at Nortel stock... if you bought $1000 of Nortel stock last year, you'd have $43 today.


And If you'd had bought $1000 worth of beer last year, you'd have $75 due to the nickle from the deposit, and you'd have had 250 six packs... A much better ROI.