Aussie tech to speed fibre tenfold

Stephen Withers
Monday, 19 October 2009 06:28

Business IT - Technology

An Australian-developed technology that can deliver a tenfold increase in the capacity of an optical fibre link is being commercialised.

Researchers at Monash University developed a technique called optical Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (oOFDM) that can yield a tenfold increase in the capacity of an optical fibre cable.

This technology is now being commercialised by Ofidium, a company backed by venture capital firm Starfish Ventures. Ofidium recently secured a $A250,000 investment from the Trans Tasman Commercialisation Fund (TTCF).

TTCF's purpose is to assist the early-stage commercialisation of innovations from universities in south eastern Australasia.

The Ofidium investment is the TTCF's first involving a Victorian university.

"More and more people are accessing broadband internet and using it for data-heavy activities, such as video. This poses a major challenge to the existing optical fibre infrastructure unless the capacity or bandwidth on existing fibres can be augmented," said Professor Arthur Lowery.

Lowery co-pioneered oOFDM with Professor Jean Armstrong, also of Monash University.

"The appeal of oOFDM is that it offers an inexpensive means of dramatically increasing long-haul capacity from the current transmission rate of 10 Gigabits per second to more than 100 Gigabits per second, over new and existing optical fibre," added Lowery.

oOFDM is said to be related to the technology used in ADSL, in that it transfers more information simultaneously.

"Standard data transmission is equivalent to transmitting a series of single notes, but oOFDM is more like transmitting the notes grouped together in a chord. Since more data is packed into the chord, more information can be sent that is less prone to technical issues, as each signal travels down the optical fibre," explained Lowery.