The main innovation of this technology is its concept based on the treatment of light, and to apply it is only necessary to change the emitting source, while other existing alternatives to increase the speed of the optical fiber involve changing the entire infrastructure, with the consequent cost.
Optical fiber technology transmits information via light pulses that, until now, traveled in a single file, leaving unused spaces between them to avoid interference. Scientists at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland have devised a method to partially overlap these light pulses like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, thus utilizing the previously unused spaces to carry more information and allowing the fiber's full capacity to be exploited.
This method allows for the near-perfect production of these light pulses, known as Nyquist pulses, thus solving the problem of interference. "These pulses, joined together in a 'puzzle' shape, have the ability to connect with each other, causing them to interfere, but not at the precise location where the information is encoded," explained Camille Brès, a member of the EPFL Group for Optical Fiber (GFO), in a statement. The idea of using light pulses in a 'puzzle' shape to improve the capacity of optical fiber is not new, but until now, no one had managed to implement it without sophisticated infrastructure.
EPFL scientists have created a laser and modulator that achieves 99% perfect light pulses, a result never before attained by other technologies. "Our results are almost too good to be true," said Luc Thévenaz, another member of EPFL's Optical Fiber Group (GFO) and co-creator of this technology with Brès. The only drawback of this technology is that it will not be possible to further increase data transmission in the future, since if the light pulses are emitted too close together, they will not be able to transmit the information correctly.
"A certain distance between each pulse must be respected to avoid interference," Thévenaz explained. In modern communication systems, such as the exchange of information between two mobile phones, data is transported from one antenna to another through fiber optic cable using light pulses: on, representing the number one, and off, representing zero.
This process results in a binary code composed of a list of ones and zeros that allows the receiver to decipher the original message.
Source: EFE News Agency
