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A bunch of optical fibres

PI: Dylan Saunders

Department: Physics

Demand for the internet continues to grow at a rate of 50% per year (Nielsen’s Law) while physical laws limit the total amount of information that can be transmitted down an optical fibre. This has led to a capacity crunch where the transmission capacity of optical fibres using standard multiplexing techniques no longer meet the growing demand, forcing companies to lay more optical fibres at significant cost.

Dr Saunders is proposing a new plug-and-play technology – temporal mode multiplexing – for encoding information for optical communication, enabling optimal information transfer down existing optical fibre and a factor of two improvement. This will provide a multi-billion dollar boost by doubling the units (Terabits per second per fibre) which telecommunication companies sell to the end internet user: 50% of the world’s population. It will allow the telecommunication industry to economically meet the growing demand of consumers without the need to lay unnecessary additional optical fibre.

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