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Researchers at the University College London have created an optical receiver with fewer components which could enable cheaper 10 Gbps home fiber connections:
While major advances have been made in core optical fibre networks, they often terminate in cabinets far from the end consumers. The so called 'last mile' which connects households to the global Internet via the cabinet, is still almost exclusively built with copper cables as the optical receiver needed to read fibre-optic signals is too expensive to have in every home.
Lead researcher, Dr Sezer Erkilinc (UCL Electronic & Electrical Engineering), said: "We have designed a simplified optical receiver that could be mass-produced cheaply while maintaining the quality of the optical signal. The average data transmission rates of copper cables connecting homes today are about 300 Mb/s and will soon become a major bottleneck in keeping up with data demands, which will likely reach about 5-10 Gb/s by 2025. Our technology can support speeds up to 10 Gb/s, making it truly future-proof."
For the study, published today in the Journal of Lightwave Technology, scientists from the UCL Optical Networks Group and UNLOC programme developed a new way to solve the 'last mile problem' of delivering fibre connections direct to households with true fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband technology. They simplified the design of the optical receiver, improving sensitivity and network reach compared to existing technology. Once commercialised, it will lower the cost of installing and maintaining active components between the central cabinet and homes.
[...] The novel optical receiver retains many of the advantages of the conventional optical receivers typically used in core networks, but is smaller and contains around 75-80% fewer components, lowering the cost of manufacture and maintenance. Co-author, Dr Seb Savory, previously at UCL and now at the University of Cambridge, added: "Our receiver, is much simpler, containing just a quarter of the detectors used in a conventional coherent optical receiver. We achieved this by applying a combination of two techniques. First a coding technique often used in wireless communications was used to enable the receiver to be insensitive to the polarisation of the incoming signals. Second we deliberately offset the receiver laser from the transmitter laser with the additional benefit that this allows the same single optical fibre to be used for both upstream and downstream data."
Found on NextBigFuture.
Polarization-Insensitive Single Balanced Photodiode Coherent Receiver for Long-Reach WDM-PONs (DOI: 10.1109/JLT.2015.2507869)
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Friday February 19 2016, @04:10AM
molecular simulations would saturate it immediately. Ask any experimental physicist. The point is once we have >1Gb/s bilateral bandwidth the *sharing* component of the internet can take off...
The problem is the current entrenched companies dont want competition and have become dependent on ripping consumers off and telling their investors that is ok.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by captain normal on Friday February 19 2016, @05:00AM
Guess I'm getting old. it wasn't 20 years ago that people were saying, once we go from 32 k to 96 k, the internet will take off. God I would love 1 Gps connection. I envy my friends in Europe that have 10~20 Mbps connections.
The main reason we don't have these speeds is because the TelCos are happy raping us for billions for crappy copper pair and co-ax drops. They see no reason to invest in plant or (especially in the case of cable providers) service.
"It is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled" Mark Twain
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Friday February 19 2016, @08:52PM
Guess I'm getting old. it wasn't 20 years ago that people were saying, once we go from 32 k to 96 k, the internet will take off.
I don't remember that, and that was in the days of 14.4k.
I remember going from dial up to permanent connection was the big thing.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Friday February 19 2016, @06:06PM
molecular simulations would saturate it immediately
Do many of those at home?
10Gig to the ISP may be great, however will that ISP with 10,000 users have 100TBit of connectivity to servers people want to go?
Offer an informed punter 100mbit for $1/month, 1gigabit for $10/month or 10gigabit for $100 a month, how many will choose the 10gig option?
Offer an informed punter 100mbit for 10c/month, 1gigabit for $1/month or 10gigabit for $10 a month, how many will choose the 10gig option?
I might go for the gigabit option, but the 10gig would be a waste. Heck just a router capable of routing >1gigabit costs a fair bit.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Friday February 19 2016, @08:30PM
Well I suspect as with most technology, we always find ways to use "more". This has happened to every part of computing apart from network connectivity - because profit.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Saturday February 20 2016, @10:17AM
For the typical user a computer from 10 years ago has all the power needed