Fastest multimode optical fibre transmission

In 2014, an international team of researchers from Eindhoven University of Technology (Netherlands) and the University of Central Florida (USA) managed to transmit 255 terabits per second of data (Tb/s) using only one multimodal optical fibre.

1 terabit (Tb) corresponds to 0.125 TeraBytes (TB), which are 12,500,000,000 Bytes.

The transmission of 255 terabit-per-second is equivalent to about 32 terabytes per second; at this speed, a 1-GB movie would be transferred in 0.03 milliseconds (or about 3 microseconds). This exceptional result was achieved using a multimode fibre (as opposite to the single-mode fibre normally used).

While single-mode fibre can transport only one signal at time, multimode fibres can transport more signals. In this case, this fibre was made of seven different “core” or carriers.