New world record in data transmission

The record was reached by a research team led by Dr. Lidia Galdino, lecturer at University College London (UCL) and researcher at the Royal Academy of Engineering, in collaboration with experts from Xter and KDDI Research. Thanks to the team's joint work, a data transfer rate of 178 terabits per second, i.e. 178,000,000 megabits per second was achieved using 16.8 THz bandwidth. If you believe the information, theoretically, retrieving the entire Netflix library would have been possible in less than a second. Another interesting example of the possibilities of the new technology is the download of the data that make up the first picture of the black hole - the generated image was so large that it had to be stored on hard disks with a total weight of half a ton, thanks to the new technology sending such a giant file would take less than an hour.

The record has been achieved through data transmission over a much wider range of wavelengths than is usually used in fibre optics. In this project, the researchers used 16.8 THz bandwidth, while the current infrastructure uses only a limited 4.5 THz bandwidth. To this end, the team of researchers combined different amplifier technologies needed to increase signal power, while developing a new signal combination pattern that best utilizes the different properties of light, the so-called Geometric Shaping (GS).

The team not only achieved a speed that exceeds the previous record set by Japanese researchers by one fifth, but also discovered that such speeds can be applied to existing infrastructure. This is an impressive achievement that will certainly bring a revolution for users around the world over the next few years, making the Internet even faster.