Optical receiver promises super-fast broadband in every home
Super-fast broadband speeds of over 10,000 megabits-per-second to every home could be made possible with new optical receiver technology developed in the UK.
Broadband speeds in the UK consistently lag behind other countries, averaging just 36 Mbps. By 2025, speeds up to 100 times faster will be needed to meet the bandwidth demands of technologies such as ultra-high definition video and online gaming.
The receiver is designed to be used in optical access networks, which link internet users with their service providers. It has been developed by researchers at the UCL Optical Networks Group and Cambridge University in a project funded by EPSRC and Huawei Technologies.
The technology, unveiled in a paper in Nature Communications, is designed as a simplified alternative to existing coherent technology, which maximises the capacity of optical fibre links by transmitting data to individual users in dedicated wavelengths of light, according to lead researcher Dr Sezer Erkılınç at UCL.
The coherent receivers are too complex and expensive for use in transmitting data to individual homes, and are their use is therefore limited to the core networks that link different countries and cities.
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