A team of Engineers from University College London (UCL) has recorded the world’s fastest data transmission speed which is five times faster than the previous record. The team reached 178 terabits speed in a second in their experiment held a few weeks back. To achieve this feat, they used on a wider wavelength rather than the typically used optical fibre. In this internet speed, one can download every content in Netflix in a second .

The researchers used the bandwidth of 16.8 THz rather than the usual 9 THz for the experiment. UCL team, led by Dr Lidia Galdino (UCL Electronic & Electrical Engineering), achieved the fabulous feet by manipulating the properties of each bandwidth. They combined different amplifier technologies needed to boost the signal power over this wider bandwidth and maximized speed by developing new Geometric Shaping (GS) constellations (patterns of signal combinations that make the best use of the phase, brightness and polarization properties of the light). They described it in a new paper in IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

UCL has carried out the research in association with two companies, Xtera and KDDI Research. When this technology commercially implemented, it will double the capacity of any system deployed in the world. They invented a cost-effective up-gradation facility which can be deployed in the existing infrastructure. There is no need to install fresh optical fibres to upgrade the facility as they can improve the speed by upgrading the amplifiers located on optical fibre routes at the 40-100km intervals. While the amplifier up-gradation would only cost £16,000, installation of new optical fibres can, in urban areas, cost up to £450,000 a kilometre.

“While current state-of-the-art cloud data-centre interconnections are capable of transporting up to 35 terabits a second, we are working with new technologies that utilize more efficiently the existing infrastructure, making better use of optical fibre bandwidth and enabling a world record transmission rate of 178 terabits a second.”, Lead author Dr Galdino, a Lecturer at UCL and a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellow, said.

The previous record for the highest rate of data transmission in a second is held by Japan’s National Institute for Communications Technology, who reached a data speed of 172 terabits per second in April.