As the internet becomes ever more popular, so the underlying infrastructure of optical fibres is coming under increasing pressure. A capacity ‘crunch’ is coming as soon as 2020, just four short years away. As current networks become unable to cope with the vast amounts of data for the billions of devices in the Internet of the Things and ultra high definition TV for Netflix, new technologies are needed.
“The University of Bristol is the leading research field on flexible network systems”
Researchers at the University of Bristol are tackling that capacity crunch with plans to unlock the full potential of optical networks. Instead of using traditional single mode optical fibres, the High Performance Networks Group (HPN) is working with the Photonic Network System Laboratory at NICT in Japan who are using multimode fibres to run multiple channels in a single optical fibre. This could provide several million Gbits/sec of bandwidth from the data centre to the networks around smart cities.
As well as using Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) and different frequencies (FDM), the research also divides the channels up across the multiple cores, using Space Division Multiplexing (SDM) without having to use complex filters. All of this allows petabit/s (1000Gbit/s) networking and exascale (1000petabit/s) networking. They presented their work last week at Europe’s leading optical communications conference.
New era in networking
“By combining state-of-the-art technology and SDM knowledge from NICT together with Bristol’s long experience in optical networking, we were able to conduct ground-breaking research accompanied by numerous network experiments,” said George Saridis, a researcher in the HPN Group (shown above in the lab).
“The University of Bristol is the leading research field on flexible network systems and this collaboration will open a new era of ultra-high capacity, fully dynamic, fully flexible optical network systems,” said Dr Naoya Wada, Director General of Network System Research Institute and Head of the Photonics Network System Laboratory at NICT, who predicts that the crunch will come by 2020.
“Our latest work could change the way that future communication systems will deliver capacity and services”
The two groups have worked closely over many years, says Professor Dimitra Simeonidou, head of the High Performance Networks Group and Director of the Smart Internet Lab at the University of Bristol. “We have worked together to demonstrate a number of ground-breaking optical networking technologies,” she said. “Our latest work could change the way that future communication systems will deliver capacity and services.”
You can find more information on the Smart Internet Lab here.
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Shona Wright
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