Fastest Single-Laser Transmission Researchers send 26 terabits per second of data w ith only one laser By Neil Savage / May 2011 Image: iStockphoto 25 May 2011²German scientists have set a world record foroptical communications , transmitting 26 trillion bits of data per second²enough to download 700 DVDs in an instant²using just a single laser. The work, which waspublished online Monday inNature Photonics , should reduce the powerconsumption of communications systems and could lead t he way toward the next standard foroptical data transmission, says Juerg Leuthold, a professor at Karlsruhe Institute of Technolog y, in Germany, who led the work. "Twenty-six terabits is a lot of information," he says. Ho wever, other optics experts point out t hat multiple-l aser systems still have the edge. The Karlsruhe researchers built upon a common approach used to increase data rates in wireless communications , called orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM). Compared with other schemes used in optical co mmunication, OFDM has the potential to make efficient use ofthe available spectrum and be to lerant to the dispersion of light in the o ptical fiber. The
