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: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday October 23 2017, @03:56PM (1 child)
> dedicated wavelength, so user speeds stay constant no matter how many users are online at once.
Dedicated?? Ma Bell, your old circuit switching phone system is hot again!
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday October 24 2017, @02:25AM
Actually, packet is at least half a century too old as well. Frequency hopping is currently the answer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr [wikipedia.org]
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @03:59PM (4 children)
So the customer will get a high-bandwidth connection to the ISP's overloaded router that then drops 90% of the packets?
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Monday October 23 2017, @04:11PM
You mean, after they light up all the dark fiber that's been laid, right?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Monday October 23 2017, @07:01PM
No, it will be a really fast connection to an ever-shrinking data cap.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ese002 on Monday October 23 2017, @08:43PM (1 child)
No. This DWM fiber will be rolled out as demonstration projects, heavily hyped, and use to convince congressmen and legislators that great things will come as long as competition and regulation are kept at bay. Actual customers will never get fiber.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @09:19PM
This guy lobbies.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday October 23 2017, @05:48PM (1 child)
How could this possibly scale well? How many wavelength divisions can they possibly create in a fiber optic cable from a head end controller to the subscriber? 4? 40? 400? 4000?
And when you do chop up the pie into dedicated slices, how much of each slice goes to waste because the bandwidth division capability is based on light wavelength which has to be reconfigured instantaneously as demand changes?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Informative) by jelizondo on Monday October 23 2017, @06:55PM
Perusing TFA, it says they achieved 8 times more subscribers using Alamouti-coded OFDM QPSK and 4 times more subscribers using 16-QAM using a passive optical network (PON). It is not my field, but I understand that each single fiber on a PON can service 32 users, so multiplying by 4 or 8 using the same infrastructure sounds very good to me.
(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.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday October 23 2017, @06:50PM (2 children)
That moment you realize you're getting ADSL2+(ATM) at 2.3\0.1MBps :(
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @02:16AM (1 child)
You more than a mile from the exchange or something?
ADSL2+ can easily to 25Mbps down, 5Mbps up (for shorter distances, anyway).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:07AM
Your figures are 3.125MBps down 0.625MBps up which are about 150% down 600% up removed from OP. Pretty bad line noise most likely.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Monday October 23 2017, @09:32PM
The day I get fibre, actual fibre, to my property, I don't think I'll have any worries about what's at either end of it enough to care.
"FTTH" is rare.
"FTTC" is a cop-out, ending in... well... copper.
And Ethernet basically shows that with a 100m of copper of so, I could easily have 1Gbit, probably a LOT MORE even without 8 full cores of wire, if it was designed for that purpose. Technically, I should be getting at least 1Gbit to the end of the street, somehow. And I'm nowhere near that and even if I could be, it would need multi-multi-multi-gigabit at the street cabinet to do anything useful for the people online at any one moment.
However a fibre, now, today, provably, can give me multi-gigabit over hundreds of kms, and can be upgraded to ridiculous speeds limited only by what I want to pay for the bits that go on each end.
Give me fibre, and I won't complain. Once I have fibre, 10Gbps is basically piss-all of what should be possible over that connection.