fiber optics
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Stretchable skin sensor could help you touch things in VR
Cornell researchers have made a stretchable skin sensor whose light-based approach could bring human-like touch to VR and robots.
Researchers squeeze 44.2 Tbps through existing fiber optic cables
Researchers in Australia used a device called a microcomb to break the record for the fastest internet connection.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: GPS shoes, shape-shifting bicycle and a wheelchair helicopter
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green. Apple dominated the news cycle this week with the debut of the iPhone 5, as the internet was buzzing with details about the lighter, thinner and faster new iPhone. But not everyone was thrilled with the news. A journalist in China spent 10 days undercover working at a Foxconn factory, detailing the grueling conditions workers undergo to produce the new gadget. Apple wasn't the only tech company in the news this week, though; Google got some time in the spotlight this week too, as the company's new augmented-reality glasses were trotted down the runway at New York Fashion Week. Continuing the trend of high-tech fashion, British designer Dominic Wilcox unveiled a GPS shoe that guides you home from anywhere in the world. This week, a team of Finnish researchers did what we would have thought was impossible, building an electricity-free computer that's powered by water droplets. Israeli designer Nitsan Debbi cooked up a batch of working electronic products made of bread. A Boise-based tech company used 3D printing technology to produce a new working beak for an injured bald eagle. Artist Luzinterruptus fitted 10,000 books that had been discarded by public libraries with LED lights and covered the streets of Melbourne with them, and in an exciting development the much-anticipated Low Line underground park in NYC debuted a full-scale model of their incredible fiber-optic solar-concentrating technology in New York City's lower east side. And in a surprising development, a researcher in Switzerland discovered a special strain of fungus that can make an ordinary violin sing like a Stradivarius.
Time Warner Cable expanding fiber broadband coverage in NYC, only businesses to benefit
Google, we're not in Kansas anymore, we're in New York, where Time Warner Cable is planning to drop $25 million on expanding its (up to) 1Gbps fiber broadband infrastructure. Specifically, the additional network is hitting neglected areas in Brooklyn and Manhattan, but it's not for general consumption -- it's strictly for businesses. Don't feel too disheartened though -- you might not be getting a slice of this particular fiber pie, but it's all you can eat, all the time at the free WiFi buffet.
Mainland China, Taiwan send first data over direct fiber optic link, take steps towards peace and harmony
Relations between mainland China and Taiwan haven't always been what you'd call warm, even with many companies having a footprint in both regions. Consider the first bursts of network traffic from a newly active connection as olive branches: a pair of undersea fiber optic cables running between southern China's Xiamen and the Taiwan-claimed Kinmen island chain represent the first truly direct data link between the two sides. Built by China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom and Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom, the link both has its share of diplomatic symbolism as well as the very practical advantage of a faster, more reliable route -- there's no globetrotting required to get data and voice to their destinations, and there's fewer chances of blackouts if a boat inadvertently slices a cable. We wouldn't go so far as to call it a Happily Ever After for either faction after decades of tension, but it does at least provide a greater semblance of normalcy to their communication. [Image credit: Aine Hickey, Wikitravel]
Huawei hardware won't be part of National Broadband Network, says Australia
Huawei just can't catch a break -- first the US blocks it from being a part of its first responder wireless network, and now, Australia is following suit. According to the Australian Financial Review, the Shenzhen-based outfit has been barred from tendering contracts for the country's A$43 billion National Broadband Network on the advice of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization. Alexander Downer, of Huawei's Australian board directors, called the situation "ridiculous," postulating that "the whole concept of Huawei being involved in cyber-warfare is based on the company being Chinese." This isn't the first time Huawei has had to combat suspicions of espionage, last year the outfit assured the US government that a "thorough investigation will prove that Huawei is a normal commercial institution and nothing more." Cheer up, Huawei, the smartphone market still loves you.
New undersea cables planned for arctic passageways, frozen gamers dream of lower pings
Hot on the heels of our own reporting of cables in the South Pacific (or the lack thereof), in flies a report that at least two new undersea cables are being planned for the arctic. According to New Scientist, a pair of lengthy fiber optic wires will be laid through the Northwest Passage above North America, connecting Japan to the United Kingdom. Moreover, a third cable is planned along the Russian coastline, with the longest of these links to purportedly become "the world's longest single stretch of optical fiber." A number of outfits are on the list to help out, and when complete, the latency between Tokyo and London should be reduced between 168ms and 230ms. The cost for such luxury? An estimated $600 million to $1.5 billion for each line. In other words, totally worth it.
Visualized: How Verizon preps LTE and 3G services for CES
With the population of Las Vegas growing by a few hundred thousand each year during CES, cell phone carriers begin planning boosted coverage weeks before the crowds arrive. We noticed a temporary cell site parked near the Las Vegas Convention Center, and asked if we could pop in to get an idea of how AT&T, Sprint and Verizon plan to accommodate all those extra devices. The trailer we saw (often called a "bull" or "cow") was connected to a standard fiber line and serves as a Verizon LTE and 3G cell site -- one of eight added for the show -- and will be tasked with keeping thousands of devices online. We'll be using Verizon LTE along with AT&T's recently launched LTE network to bring you all of this coming week's gadget news, making these temporary sites absolutely critical to our operations as well.
Cornell scientists perform optical illusion, herald invisibility through bending of light (video)
Taken at face value, you'd almost think that Cornell scientists had successfully bent the fabric of time. With gobs of fiber optics at their disposal, the researchers have devised a method to distort light in a way that makes events in time undetectable to observers. Initial success in this Pentagon-backed invisibility project has cloaked an event for 40 trillionths of a second, leading Cornell scientists to tout, "You kind of create a hole in time where an event takes place. You just don't know that anything ever happened." The feat is performed by separating light into more fundamental wavelengths, first by slowing the red and speeding the blue. A resultant gap forms in the beam, which leaves a small window for subterfuge. Then, as the light passes through another set of fibers -- which slow the blue and speed the red -- light reaches the observer as if no disturbance had taken place at all. While the brilliant researchers ultimately imagine art thieves being able to pass undetected through museums with this method, the immediate challenge will be in prolonging the light gap. This could prove frustrating, however, due to the scattering and dispersion effects of light. As Cornell scientists dream of their ultimate heist, visual learners will most certainly want to check the video after the break.
Nano-structured glass creates new type of computer memory
We've sure come a long way since frying ants with a magnifying glass. Researchers at the University of Southampton used nano-structures to create millimeter-sized "monolithic glass space-variant polarization converters," which ultimately changes the way light travels through and is stored in glass. These "whirlpools" of light data can be read like information stored in optical fibers -- allowing for "more precise laser material processing, optical manipulation of atom-sized objects, ultra-high resolution imaging and potentially, table-top particle accelerators." (Does that mean we all get one of these on our desks?) This new five dimensional approach is reusable, twenty times cheaper and more compact compared to old methods of microscopy using a spatial light modulator, making it a win-win. Check out the full PR after the fold. [Thanks, Adam]
Researchers create 26 terabit-per-second connections with just a single laser
Remember that pair of 100 terabit-per-second connections we told you about earlier this moth? Impressive? Sure, but not entirely practical thanks to the massive banks of lasers (370 to be exact) that guzzled several kilowatts of electricity. Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany haven't hit 100Tbps yet, but they were able push 26Tbps using just one, lonely laser. The new single-laser fiber-optic speed record was set using a technique called fast Fourier transform that pulses light at an incredibly high rate with data encoded in 325 distinct colors across the spectrum. A detector at the receiving end is able to distinguish between the various colored data streams, based on tiny differences in arrival time, and recombine them into a high-speed torrent of ones and zeros. The scientists behind the project believe that, eventually, the technology could make its way into commercial use and be integrated into silicon chips. Now, someone needs to hurry up and jack our FiOS connection into this thing -- all this talk of terabits-per-second and graphene modulators, yet we're still jealous of grandma Löthberg.
Graphene-powered web could download 3-D movies in seconds, give MPAA nightmares
Graphene, is there anything it can't do? Researchers are already trying to put it in processors, fuel cells, and batteries -- now your internet connection might get ten-times faster thanks to the silicon successor. Researchers at UC Berkeley have created tiny, one-atom-thick modulators that could switch the data-carrying light on and off in a fiber-optic connection much faster than current technology. In addition to running at a higher frequency (the team believes it will scale up to 500GHz -- modern modulators run at about 1GHz) the smaller, 25-micron size means thinner cables could be used, reducing capacitance and further boosting speeds. Labs have already crossed the 100 terabit threshold and graphene could push that even higher, yet we're still stuck staring at a buffering screen every time we try to Netflix Degrassi.
Researchers create two 100 terabit per second optical connections, dare us to torrent something
Even a woman with a 40 Gbps internet connection might feel a twinge of jealousy at this news -- Japan has successfully tested two separate 100 terabit per second data links that use a single optical fiber to carry their loads. New Scientist reports that NEC scholars stuffed the light from 370 lasers into 165 kilometers of fiber to achieve a speed of 101.7 Tbps, while NICT researchers set a new record of 109 Tbps using a special fiber with seven cores to manage the trick. We imagine that Alcatel-Lucent and NTT aren't sitting still. Not that we really care who has the fastest fiber... just so long as one end leads to our house.
Virgin Media to test 1.5Gbps broadband on London's Silicon Roundabout
Just last week we reported on Fujitsu's plans to get in on the gigabit broadband game, and now Virgin Media is taking things a step further by announcing its intention to test internet speeds up to 1.5Gbps in east London. The trial, which plans to deliver upload speeds of 150Mbps, uses a similar fiber optic setup as the one employed by Fujitsu, and targets multimedia companies near the junction of the city's Old Street and City Road, also referred to as the Silicon Roundabout. These tests have been made possible by a £13 billion investment from Virgin Media. If this thing pans out, it looks like Google might have some catching up to do. Full PR after the break.
Fujitsu to build 1Gbps fiber optic broadband network in the UK, but needs BT to play fair first
Good news for anyone feeling left behind by the broadband revolution just because of their post code: Fujitsu has just announced a joint venture to deliver fiber optic connectivity to neglected rural homes in the UK. Built on hardware provided by Cisco and supported by Virgin Media and TalkTalk, this network will focus on channeling fiber directly to the home, which is said to provide symmetrical 1Gbps bandwidth with up to 10Gbps speeds considered possible down the line. Best news of all, perhaps, is that the cabling will be available on a wholesale basis to all ISPs, not just the ones involved in the project, so the UK may finally get a decent taste of what competition in the internet service space feels like. Alas, there's a key line in the press release that notes the new venture is dependent on BT providing "access to its underground ducts and telegraph poles on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms," which it apparently isn't doing at the moment. Ah well, we're sure they'll sort things out like the mature professionals that they are. Full PR after the break.
UA engineers develop 'invisible,' fiber optic border monitoring system
As if the nation's overexcited and misguided border vigilantes didn't have enough ways to trigger alarms and bedevil the U.S. Border Patrol (whose job is hard enough as it is), University of Arizona researchers have developed Helios, a monitoring system that uses an acoustic sensor to detect movement via fiber optic cables buried beneath the US-Mexico border. The system is evidently able to distinguish between vehicles, animals, and humans -- and it can even differentiate between different types of human activity, including walking, running, and digging. But that ain't all! UA is looking to spin the technology out into the private sector, working with a company called Fotech to automate the system, further refine the database of signals, and maybe even integrate this into a comprehensive border security system complete with mobile surveillance vehicles and an animatronic Jan Brewer that is, according to a guy we overheard at the bar, "only slightly more human than the actual Arizona governor."
Auto-tune nabs new lease on life, kills phase noise in long-haul fiber transmissions
(function() { var s = document.createElement('SCRIPT'), s1 = document.getElementsByTagName('SCRIPT')[0]; s.type = 'text/javascript'; s.async = true; s.src = 'http://widgets.digg.com/buttons.js'; s1.parentNode.insertBefore(s, s1); })(); Digg It's probably advisable to not mention this to T-Pain or anyone even closely related to him, but it looks as if auto-tune may have finally found a legitimate use. You know -- aside from crafting one of the most hilarious Bud Light commercials in the history of Bud Light commercials. An EU-funded team has crafted a prototype device that uses a technology similar to auto-tune in order to nix cross-talk on signals that travel down fiber optic cabling. Currently, the clean up process on phase noise ends up decimating the total capacity available to travel, so far less information actually gets through the end than what you started with. Now, this here device is claiming to spit shine the noisy signals and "re-transmit them with fuller capacity." Periklis Petropoulos, a researcher on the project from the University of Southampton's Optoelectronics Research Centre, summed it up as such: "With this demonstration we've shown that it is possible to use the capabilities of the optical fiber to the full without being restricted by the capabilities of the electronics; you could say that in its final functionality, it is like auto-tune." Obligatory video demonstration is after the break.
Intel's Light Peak optical interconnect shrinks slightly, LaCie, WD, Compal and Avid begin prototyping
Intel's Light Peak isn't setting any new speed records at IDF 2010 -- it's still rated at 10Gbps for now -- but the optical data transfer system is finally looking like it might appear in some actual products. As you can see immediately above, a Light Peak to HDMI converter has shrunk considerably since May, and a number of optically-infused sample products were on display at Intel's Light Peak booth. Compal's got a laptop with the optical interconnect built in, while Western Digital showed an external hard drive, from which the Compal could pull and edit multimedia in real-time using a Light Peak-enabled Avid rackmount. Meanwhile, LaCie showed off what appeared to be a 4big Quadra RAID array with two Light Peak ports catapulting high-definition video content at 770MB/s to a nearby Samsung TV, though we should warn you that the TV itself was a bit of a hack job, and not a collaboration with Samsung -- note the big, honking EVGA video card sticking out of the back. Though obviously a good bit of work went into these prototypes, Intel reps told us none would necessarily become a reality. Either way, don't expect to see Light Peak products until sometime next year.
Trapped Chilean miners watch a little soccer via fiber optics
It turns out that being trapped in a mine in Chile is only one of the many problems associated with being trapped in a mine in Chile. The mental well-being of the victims looks to be just as important as the rescue mission itself: a small village of miners' family members has sprung up around the mine, offering moral support and preparing food to send down, and NASA psychologists have been offering their advice on the miners' sleep-wake cycles. A few PSPs made their way down the shaft as well. Today, they even got a soccer fix as they watched their team play the Ukraine via a projector lowered down to their safety chamber on a fiber optic cable (Chile lost 2 - 1). While we're not sure which heroic projector model descended 2,300 feet below the earth's surface, we're just happy that some tech could brighten these guys' day just a little bit -- especially considering they could be in there for up to four more months. [Image credit: Location Scout's flickr]
Fiber optics get political in Australia as opposition party vows to scale down national broadband plan
When Australia goes to the polls on August 21st, citizens will vote for more than men and the traditional issues they represent -- the ballots cast will directly impact the country's national broadband plan. Where Australia's ruling Labor party had pledged A$43 billion for an up-to-100Mbps fiber optic network fed directly to 90 99 percent of homes (and agreed to pay A$11 billion to Telstra) over the next seven to eight years, the opposing Liberal-National coalition says if elected, it will scrap that notion in favor of a cheaper A$6.3 billion plan. That money would create a fiber-optic backbone by 2017 but actually connects homes with hybrid fiber-coaxial connections, DSL and about A$2 billion worth of wireless, with a minimum promised speed of 12Mbps. The coalition says these services would cover 97 percent of Australians, with satellite coverage for the final 3 percent, and that those networks receiving funds from the project and connecting to the backbone would have to compete based on pricing (set by the country's Competition and Consumer Commission) and pledge open access. Having never lived in Australia ourselves, we don't know what's best, but we're pretty sure we wouldn't be satisfied with the 12Mbps end of the Liberal-National stick. Update: Labor plan is to bring 100Mbps to 99 percent of the population, not 90 percent as originally stated.
