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Researchers at University College London have developed a new receiver technology that promises data rates in excess of 10 Gbps to home users.
Slow internet speeds and the Internet 'rush hour' – the peak time when data speeds drop by up to 30% – could be history with new hardware designed and demonstrated by UCL researchers that provides consistently high-speed broadband connectivity.
[...] "To maximise the capacity of optical fibre links, data is transmitted using different wavelengths, or colours, of light. Ideally, we'd dedicate a wavelength to each subscriber to avoid the bandwidth sharing between the users. Although this is already possible using highly sensitive hardware known as coherent receivers, they are costly and only financially viable in core networks that link countries and cities.
"Their cost and complexity has so far prevented their introduction into the access networks and limits the support of multi‑Gb/s (1 Gb/s=1000 Mb/s) broadband rates available to subscribers," said co-author and Head of the Optical Networks Group, Professor Polina Bayvel (UCL Electronic & Electrical Engineering).
The new, simplified receiver retains many of the advantages of coherent receivers, but is simpler, cheaper, and smaller, requiring just a quarter of the detectors used in conventional receivers.
Simplification was achieved by adopting a coding technique to fibre access networks that was originally designed to prevent signal fading in wireless communications. This approach has the additional cost-saving benefit of using the same optical fibre for both upstream and downstream data.
"This simple receiver offers users a dedicated wavelength, so user speeds stay constant no matter how many users are online at once. It can co-exist with the current network infrastructure, potentially quadrupling the number of users that can be supported and doubling the network's transmission distance/coverage," added Dr Erkılınç.
The full report is available:
M. S. Erkılınç, D. Lavery, K. Shi, B. C. Thomsen, R. I. Killey, S. J. Savory, P. Bayvel. Bidirectional wavelength-division multiplexing transmission over installed fibre using a simplified optical coherent access transceiver. Nature Communications, 2017; 8 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-00875-z
(Score: 5, Insightful) by AssCork on Monday October 23 2017, @05:52PM (2 children)
New, cheaper equipment that replaces expensive stuff does not mean a better user experience.
It means you pay the same price, while the carrier's expenses drop.
Just popped-out of a tight spot. Came out mostly clean, too.
(Score: 3, Touché) by BananaPhone on Monday October 23 2017, @07:53PM
don't worry, the price will still go up for consumers.
Unborn granchildren of stock holders will each need a third cottage.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday October 23 2017, @07:54PM
And no matter what the technology is, it's entirely possible that you're connection won't be upgraded at all, because despite federal regulations and funding to upgrade networks across the US, the telecoms simply keep the money from the feds and avoid doing any of the actual work while bribing whoever they need to in order to keep the pesky regulators off their backs.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.