New ultra-low-cost optical fiber (POF)
Researchers at the University of Bologna behind a new connectivity solution at low cost. And while in the U.S. think of the laser, Pisa touches the 448 Gbps
Rome - Researchers at the University of Bologna and the Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, have developed a new ultra-low-cost optical fiber: the new material was called POF, which stands for Plastic Optical Fiber.
The results of their research were published in the scientific journal "Journal of lightwave technology": the POF guarantee the performance of high speed production costs down by not resorting to the traditional glass such as optical fiber, but, as the name implies, the plastic. The material would, in addition, to simplify the installation of very even, halving the costs.
The all, the researcher explains Davide Visani, thanks to the size of the wire permitted: "the traditional fiber needs of thin wires a hundredth of a millimeter, while the plastic works well with threads of a millimeter," which, as such, are " easier to handle and install "and whose components are cheap.
The new fiber would also ensure more speed: with a long wire 50 meters, the new fiber make it possible to navigate at a rate 53 times greater than at present. In the course of their study, the researchers have designed and built with the new fiber an interconnection system able to manage both UMTS signals that WiMax.
Meanwhile Pisa has witnessed an experiment that seems to have set a record in the context of high-speed Internet, an experiment conducted jointly by the Institute for Information and Communication Technologies of Perception (Tecip) high school Sant'Anna Pisa, National Laboratory of Photonic Networks National Consortium for Telecommunications (CNIT) with supperto technical Ericsson, has transmitted data at 448 Gbps.
In the official statement is talk of a second for data only between "equal to 20 high-definition movies or 500 movies in standard quality, 22,500 DSL connections to 20 Mbit / s, 7 million or 100 million video standard phone calls."
The researchers have leaned to a double optical carrier inserted in an apparatus of commercial fiber network: in practice have done so that the information was aggregated at the electronic level and then transmitted in the form of light signal through an optical cable.
"We have quadrupled the previous record for commercial infrastructure, which was 100 gigabits per second - explains the engineer Luca Poti, head of the research area CNIT - exploiting the potential of a mature technology such as electronics and fusing it with the transmission capacity data of photonics. "
For the moment this extraordinary transmission capacity is not addressed to create new services but to improve the performance of fiber optic systems already in use: "It is not meant for single interconnection between computers, but entire data hubs," says Potì. This, moreover, increases the capacity of these joints allow us to improve cascade also the services made available to users, and the speed at which cost. Avoiding the danger of saturation of the mobile network as a result of the spread of the services associated with it such as video calling and browsing via smartphones.
In the coming months will be tested on network segments installed all over the world, then become Ericsson product portfolio.
To speed up the tramissione data, meanwhile, the University of Central Florida has thought of laser diodes and is thinking about countermeasures to overcome the instability observed with the transmission of heavy data with this technology. However, it remains the problem of high voltages to which they must work.
29/03/2011
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Translated via software
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Source:
Italian version of ReteArchitetti.it