Scientists in Germany used a juiced-up laser to deliver data at 26 terabits per second (Tbps) over an optical fiber cable, apparently establishing a new world record, they said, or at least surpassing their previous best of 10 Tbps.
Led by German's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, the group of scientists used a single laser to create a swath of pulses (called frequency combs), separated them, used fat Fourier transform to magnify them into 325 color channels, then sent them down a 50 kilometer cable where another optical fast Fourier transform encoded them back into data. The pulses carried the equivalent of 200,000 high resolution images in one second.
While in the very early experimental stages, the scientific work could in the end be the savior of such bandwidth consumptive services as cloud computing and, more importantly, 3D TV and other similarly fat pipe services such as virtual reality.
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- ZDNet has this story
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