US researchers report faster fibre optic transmissions

New York

ONE way to understand a challenge of sending data through fibre-optic circuits is to imagine a person shouting to someone else down a long corridor. As the listener moves farther away, the words become fainter and more difficult to discern as they echo off the walls.

A similar challenge confronts the designers of networks that carry data. Beams of laser light packed densely in fibre-optic glass wires need to be both amplified and recreated at regular intervals to send them thousands of miles. The process of converting the optical ones and from light to electricity and then back again roughly every 97 kilometres is a significant part of the cost of these networks. The process also limits how much data they can carry.