Faster optical fiber breakthrough

The new optical fibres were developed by mitigating a feature known as nonlinearity. Image: yienkeat/Shutterstock A Monash PhD student has presented the next step in creating superfast internet through the optimisation of optical fibre at a prestigious conference in Kyoto. Md. Monir Morshed of the Optical Communications Group in the Department of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering presented his findings in a post-deadline session at the 18th OptoElectronics and Communications Conference/ Photonics in Switching (OECC) earlier this month. Post-deadline sessions are reserved for late-breaking innovations and are usually dominated by industrial research laboratories. Mr Morshed said he was thrilled to present at the largest optical communications conference in the Asia Pacific. "Attending the conference was a wonderful opportunity to hear from the leading researchers in the field. The paper was a great achievement for our group," Mr Morshed said. Mr Morshed's research aims to increase the data capacity of optical fibre, in terms of both speed and distance by mitigating a feature known as nonlinearity. Impressively, he demonstrated data speeds of more than one terabit per second over more than 800 kilometres. This is more than 10 times the capacity of current systems and could lay the groundwork for superfast inter-city networks. "Internet users increasingly demand more and more bandwidth. We are working out how to optimise existing infrastructure to create next generation optical systems," Mr Morshed said. Leader of the Optical Communications Group and Australian Laureate Fellow, Professor Arthur Lowery, praised Mr Morshed's research. “Monir has made tremendous progress in his PhD, with theoretical and experimental innovations that are globally competitive. I am extremely proud of my group and its achievements in tackling the nonlinear capacity limit in optical fibres,” Professor Lowery said. The presentation is the latest success for the Optical Communications Group, following post-deadline papers at last year’s OECC and the Optical Fiber Communications Conference (OFC) in 2013. The research was funded by the Australian Research Council’s (ARC) Centre of Excellence in Ultra-high Bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS) as part of a collaboration with University of Sydney researchers. Professor Lowery, Dr Liang Du and Benjamin Foo from Monash, and Dr Mark Pelusi from The University of Sydney, were co-authors on the paper.