USA: new polymers and significantly increase fiber capacity
Specialists Bell Labs - the research division of Lucent Technologies, reported new progress in the development of a new generation of equipment for optical networks. Created by them of plastics optical signal modulator capable of efficiently operating at frequencies of 150-200 GHz, which is 15-20 times higher than the current operating frequency of the bulk of lithium niobate modulators operating at 10 GHz. Promising semiconductor modulators can operate at frequencies up to 40 GHz.
Thus, using the new polymer can be transferred to modulators 150-200 billion bits per second.
The new modulator has a sandwich structure: its center is a tiny strip of gold, surrounded by a layer of polymeric material. Careful selection of the polymer to minimize the effects of interference and fading of the optical signal. In the laboratory, the researchers managed to transmit a signal at frequencies up to 1600 GHz, although in large equipment such performance is unlikely to be implemented soon.
Besides the obvious benefits - increasing the speed of data transmission over fiber-optic backbones - new technology has several other advantages, including, in particular, low power consumption: for supply of polymer modulator enough voltage to 2.5 V, while the lithium niobate modulator consumes 10 . This eliminates the need to increase the transformers that are used when placing the silicon chip and modulators on one semiconductor board.
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