Nokia Bell Labs, Deutsche Telekom T-Labs and the Technical University of Munich have developed a signal modulation technique which has achieved data rates of over 1 Tb/s using optical fibre. This speed is getting close to the theoretical maximum.
 
The maximum data transfer rate for the fibre is given by Shannon’s law and 1 Tb/s is quite near to the theoretical maximum. This novel technology is set to gain wide acceptance as the appetite for greater data bandwidth grows. The researchers demonstrated the record-breaking data transfer using in a real-world setup. The trial of this new modulation approach, known as Probabilistic Constellation Shaping (PCS), uses quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) formats to achieve higher transmission capacity over a given channel to significantly improve the spectral efficiency of optical communications.
 
According to the researchers, future data networks will require data rates several orders of magnitude higher than existing networks. Techniques that can adapt to the conditions of the channel in use will be able to optimize the existing network infrastructure, achieving speeds close to the Shannon limit without the cost of increasing the optical network complexity.