Internet Bandwidth To Get The Boost - New Fibre Optics Technology At Work

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  Ankita Katdare

  Last year in the journal Nature Photonics, Willner and his team had described a way to use these helical twists of light to transmit data. But in their experiments, the signal traveled through free space over a short distance – not an easy model to translate into modern communication networks. Maintaining a swirling yet stable vortex of light in a fiber was thought to be improbable – until now.
  
  To keep the light spinning, the researchers strategically coated parts of the inside of the fiber with certain elements – germanium and fluorine, in particular. Those elements alter the refractive index within the cable, changing the angle at which the laser signal is reflected. Think of it as similar to the rifling inside of a gun barrel – except that while the grooves inside a gun create the spin of a bullet, the fiber’s design works to maintain an already existing spin.
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  Ashraf HZ

  Well.. as much as we are putting effort in increasing capacity of transmission links, it wont be much if routers can't process these data fast enough 😛
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  Kaustubh Katdare

  ash

  Well.. as much as we are putting effort in increasing capacity of transmission links, it wont be much if routers can't process these data fast enough 😛

  Valid point; I think just like 5G this technology will take several years before making it to mainstream. By then we'll have routers capable of handling all the bandwidth available.
  
  I sometimes wonder whether researchers should really invest in high-speed data transmission over longer distances (hundreds of kilometers). Instead, I firmly believe that more research should be put into developing wireless technologies so that we truly go wire-free in the next 2 decades.
  
  Or do we have known limitations on how much data can be transferred over the wireless networks, theoretical, it may be at present.
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  Ashraf HZ

  Kaustubh Katdare

  I sometimes wonder whether researchers should really invest in high-speed data transmission over longer distances (hundreds of kilometers).

  They should still dedicate research ways to increase bandwidth for backhaul, because in the end, you still need big pipes to cater to the increased demand for data (e.g with LTE, microwave back haul links will struggle, should swap to fiber). However, it should not be limited to transmission alone, meaning you need to take into account the aggregation and core elements of the network.
  
  

  Or do we have known limitations on how much data can be transferred over the wireless networks, theoretical, it may be at present.

  I suppose we can say the limitation follows the Shannon–Hartley theorem, where channel capacity is bound by bandwidth and SNR.
  
  We got as close to the Shannon limit with LDPC & Turbo codes for error efficiency, so more focus is now on developments in antenna technologies, spectral efficiency, using more bandwidth (including re-farming and possibility white spaces). We can play around with TX power, but these days we are supposed to be reducing battery usage.. hence that could be another limitation.