Written by: Jake Wong, Oct. 20th
The average internet speed in Canada is ~30Mb/s (which may be an inflated average), meaning that it takes average Canadians half a minute to download a 1GB movie, or about 3 minutes to download a full 5GB game. However, most people don’t have high internet speeds, or even if they do speeds get bogged down by high traffic and many users using the same site at once. There must be a more optimal way to use the internet that is cost effective and efficient. That is exactly the question Dr. Sezer Erkılınç at the University of College London thought when he began his research on optical access networks.
Optical access networks had already existed prior to this research, as optic fibers are commonly used around the world for data transfer and Internet connection. Essentially, each fiber wire transmits data by sending light pulses. However, this does not necessarily mean that each fiber is restricted to sending information to only one receiver. By having different non-interfering wavelengths of light in each fiber, multiple receivers can be connected to a single fiber. This can be done using coherent receivers, which is highly sensitive and therefore has the precision to separate wavelengths. However, this is extremely costly and would cause fast internet to be unaffordable. Fortunately, Dr. Sezer Erkılınç’s team found a way to implement this multi-wavelength technique without the high costs. This can be done “by adopting a coding technique to fibre access networks that was originally designed to prevent signal fading in wireless communications”. Unfortunately the paper is yet to be published so the details are not clear, but you can read the article about this project here.
This technology will take advantage of the current data system we have in place today, so no new infrastructure will be needed to be built around it. Also, if each user is assigned a specific wavelength of light, other uses accessing the same information will not interfere and slow down the data transfer. Finally, this method is extremely efficient, offering up to 10Gb/s, which is 300x faster than the average speed of Canada. Further testing needs to be done, but if this technology can be put into place, we may be seeing advancing internet speeds to match our ever increasing need for high speed data transfer. This technology will revolutionize how we use the internet, whether it be to watch movies, play games, or download files. I think if this technology will truly allow us to increase internet speeds, experience less lag, AND reduce our payments, it is worth our time investigating and testing it.
