RMIT Announces Faster Internet Connection with "Twisted Light"

The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) has announced a new technology that it says could allow 100 times faster Internet access.

Broadband optical fibers carry information on light pulses through optical fibers, but how light is coded at one end and processed at the other end affects the speed of data transmission. RMIT said that by harnessing the "twisted light" beams, it could carry more data and process it faster.

"Current optical communications is heading towards a" capacity shortage "because they are failing to cope with the ever-increasing demands of big data," said Dr. Haoran Ren of RMIT's School of Science.

"What we have been able to do is accurately transmit the data through the light to its maximum capacity, so as to enable us to significantly increase our bandwidth."

According to RMIT, the nanophotonic device manufactured by RMIT's Nanotechnology Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (LAIN) encodes more data and processes them much faster than conventional optical fibers using a special form of twisted light.

Ren explained that the device designed for twisted light reading is the missing key to unlocking ultra-fast and ultra-broadband communications.

"Advanced fiber-optic communications, such as those used in Australia's national broadband network (NBN), use only a fraction of the actual light capacity by carrying data on the color spectrum", explained RMIT.

RMIT explained that the latter technology contains data on light waves that have been twisted spirally to further increase their capacity.

This is what is called light in a state of orbital angular momentum (OAM).

"Our miniature OAM nanoelectronic detector is designed to separate different OAM light conditions in a continuous order and to decode the information conveyed by a twisted light," Ren added.

"To do this before, it would take a machine the size of a table, which is quite unrealistic for telecommunications.Using ultra-thin topological sheets measuring a fraction of a millimeter, our invention does better this work and fits at the end of an optical fiber. "

In 2016, LAIN described how it was able to decode a small twisted light range on a nanophotonic chip, but at the time, the technology to detect a wide range of OAM light for optical communications was not viable.

However, on Thursday, Professor Min Gu, Director of LAIN and Deputy Vice Chancellor for Research, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at RMIT, said the materials used in the device were compatible with the materials at Silicon base used in most technologies, which makes it easier to scale for industry applications.

"Our OAM nanoelectronic detector is like an" eye "capable of" seeing "the information conveyed by a twisted light and decoding it so that it is understood by the electronics. The low cost and small size of this technology make it a viable application for the next generation of broadband optical communications, "he said.

"It is scalable to the existing fiber technology and could be used to increase the bandwidth, or even processing speed, of this fiber by 100 over the next two years." The considerable impact it will have on telecommunications is what is so exciting. "

Gu also stated that the detector can be used to receive quantum information sent via a torsion light.

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