Researchers from Monash, Swinburne and RMIT universities in Australia have tested a single light source delivering 44.2 Tbps.
The research, which is published in the journal Nature Communications, tested a device that replaces 80 lasers with one single piece of equipment known as a micro-comb.
The ultra-high data transmission occurred over 75 km of standard optical fibre using the single integrated chip source over the C-band at 1550 nm with a spectral efficiency of 10.4 bits s−1 Hz−1. Micro-comb spacing of 48.9 GHz enabled the use of 64 QAM – quadrature amplitude modulated.
Professor Moss, Director of the Optical Sciences Centre at Swinburne, says: “In the 10 years since I co-invented micro-comb chips, they have become an enormously important field of research.
“It is truly exciting to see their capability in ultra-high bandwidth fibre optic telecommunications coming to fruition. This work represents a world-record for bandwidth down a single optical fibre from a single chip source, and represents an enormous breakthrough for part of the network which does the heaviest lifting. Micro-combs offer enormous promise for us to meet the world’s insatiable demand for bandwidth.”
