Fiber Optic World Records Broken

Thousands of miles of existing fiber still lie dark, but as schnucki writes, "Bell Laboratories believe they have broken two world records in the use of optical fibres to transmit information." They sent 160 gigabits/sec on one wavelength, and then in a separate experiment sent 1,022 separate wavelengths down one fiber. You do the math. Check it out.

Comments

Sampling rates, digital, and misc cool stuff

[Signal 11]

Just incase you guys didn't know - the reason fiber optic can go so fast is because it transmits analog signals. That means you can layer several hundred harmonics on a single frequency and create a very complex waveform. The trick is in the decoding - converting it to digital. That's where all the sample-rate jazz comes into play.

This isn't really revolutionary new technology.. we've known about stuff like this for awhile. There's a nearly infinite number of ways to encode frequencies, and stack things onto each other.

I find myself wanting of the ability to insert IMG tags here. :( In short, picture a sine wave. Now along the slope of one, picture another sine wave attached to it. And so on. I suspect they're doing something like that. Actually, TVs do something like this - it's how the sync pulses and whatnot work. Very facinating technology. Also very old by today's standard, but still very useful.

--