Japan - Olympic Internet speed record

The development of the Internet in the XXI century has revolutionized our daily life and so far there is no sign of slowing down in this area. One might even be tempted to say that we are getting closer to the "digital society". And what comes with it, along with the progress of modern Internet technologies, we need faster and faster access to the Internet. In the era of constant pursuit of faster data transfer speeds, Japanese scientists from the National Institute of Information and Communication Technology (NICT) have broken another record in terms of Internet speed. The engineers achieved a data transfer rate of 319 terabits per second (Tbps)! And this is a new world record!

To achieve this result (319 Tbps), NICT researchers developed a new 4-core optical fiber with a diameter of 125 µm (instead of one), and in addition a 552-channel comb laser was used. "NICT built a long-distance transmission system around a 4-core optical fiber with a standard shield diameter to take advantage of the wider transmission bandwidth" It is also worth remembering that the previous record was set less than a year ago, in August 2020, and was 179 Tb/s. These are truly remarkable achievements, considering that in 2012, the company "Holy Optochip" IBM, made the first optical transmission, which was about 1Tbps. As you can see, internet speeds have increased significantly during the last decade.

The figure above shows an idealized schematic of the transmission system developed by Japanese NICT engineers. A brief explanation of the various stages of data transmission follows:

1. 552 optical carriers of different wavelengths, are jointly generated in the frequency comb.

2. multiplexed polarization 16QAM modulation is performed on the output light source (with optical frequency comb), while delay is added to create different signal sequences.

3. each signal sequence is inserted into one core of the 4-core optical fiber.

4. after propagation in the 4-core optical fiber with a length of 69.8km, the transmission losses are compensated by optical amplifiers in S, C and L bands. The signal is fed into the 4-core optical fiber using a loop switch. Repeating this transmission in a loop, the final transmission distance was as long as 3001km

5 The signal was received from each core and then the transmission error was measured.

In the above transmission system diagram, the data rate was determined by applying error-correcting coding to the transmitted bit stream.

In turn, this graph plots the experimental results and shows the data rate (throughput) after decoding. Although there are some differences, the average data rate per channel is about 145 gigabits per second, for each core. In contrast, the average data rate for the combined superchannels (4-core) was over 580 gigabits per second! A data rate of 319 terabits per second was achieved in 552 wavelength channels.
The researchers also found that the transmitted information and data did not degrade or slow down the speed of the Internet, even when transmitted over long distances, up to 3001km. But here it is worth mentioning that the "long-range system" was simulated in the lab using helical cabling.

The resulting Internet speed is about 16,000 times faster than the speed of 5G technology, which is available only in some parts of the world anyway. However, implementing the experiment on a national or even regional scale would be extremely expensive. Besides, one of the key aspects of large-scale Internet development is the cost, and users do not want to pay high amounts for access to high-speed Internet. Researchers at NICT have found that the experimental technology goes well beyond 5G and is much more practical than 5G!

What can be done with the Internet speed of 319Tb/s ?

Probably many of us are now asking ourselves how such a high data transfer rate can be used? Well, let me give you some ideas. With such a high speed Internet you can download more than 7000 movies in high resolution, in just one second. At an internet speed of 319Tb/s, you can also download all the movies from the Netflix library, which contains about 3781 movies (according to RealGood), in less than a second.

However, it's important to remember that 4-core fiber was not developed to download entire libraries of movies and TV shows. The high-speed Internet network was developed to transmit massive amounts of relevant data over long distances. The researchers also mention that the 4-core fiber optic system needs further refinement before it can be deployed in the real world. Additionally, developing such a network on a large scale can be very expensive. The extremely important news is that the new 4-core lines, can fit into a "standard cladding". This means they can be supported by existing infrastructure.

The progress made by NICT scientists will probably influence the creation of an even faster backbone network in the future. 5G technology is expected to eventually provide speeds of around 10Gbps. However, this does not change the fact that 5G will still need to connect to microcells and even to the vast fiber networks of the existing Internet. Therefore, such improvements in fiber optic technology as NICT has made are of great importance. Developments in fiber optic technology make the dream of a 6G network a very real as well as extremely exciting prospect.

Author:
Leszek Błaszczyk