An Advance May Double the Capabilities of Fiber Optics

Researchers have announced an advance that could double the capacity of fiber-optic circuits, potentially opening the way for networks to carry more data over long distances while significantly reducing their cost.

Electrical engineers at the Photonics Laboratory of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technologies at the University of California, San Diego proposed a way to extend the range that beams of laser light in fiber-optic glass wires can travel and, in theory, achieve that dramatic improvement. In its report, the group described a way to “predistort” the data that is transmitted via laser beams so that it can be deciphered easily over great distances. This is done by creating, in effect, guardrails for the light beams with a device known as a frequency comb — using very precise and evenly spaced signals — to encode the information before it is transmitted.