Research team avoids information overload by a hair's breadth

To cope with the ever-increasing demand for faster data streaming, a joint research team from India and Scotland are working on a game-changing system for optical communication that forms the backbone of today's internet world.
The active fibre components that the Indo-Scottish team are developing will increase the amount of data that can be carried by glass fibres no thicker than a human hair exponentially, a release by Heriot-Watt University of Scotland said today.
The team is from Heriot-Watt University's School of Engineering & Physical Sciences, led by Dr Henry Bookey and the Central Glass and Ceramic Research Institute (CGCRI) in Kolkata, led by Dr Mukul Chandra Paul.

The Indian team brings expertise in the fabrication of novel optical fibre structures, while the Scottish team will design, test and build the devices enabled by the new fibres.
The project has been granted GBP 70,000 as part of the UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI).
The demand for bandwidth in optical communications continues to grow with the rapid growth of online gaming, video streaming and so on.

All around the world, optical Faber communication system, which currently single-core fibres, will form bottle-necks in near future, without further advances in technology, researchers believe.
'Multi-core' fibre (MCF) is widely considered to promise a solution to this problem.

"With the prevalence of video streaming and the emergence of cloud computing, we're reaching the capacity of standard, single core fibres. Multi-core optical fibre (MCF) is considered by many to be the next platform for optical communications," said Bookey.
"This collaboration brings together world leading groups in optical fibre research and optics and represents a rare opportunity to bring together key technologies that could herald a step change in the industry," he added.
Aside from components for communications, the development of multi-cored fibre laser array devices may have other applications including multi-functional fibre probes for endoscopy, laser surgery, machining and defence.