Researchers achieve 400 Gbps wireless speed with photonic system

New system achieves record 400 Gbps wireless speed

Researchers have developed a new photonic system that achieved a record-breaking 400 Gbps wireless transmission speed. The same hardware also delivered a 512 Gbps data rate over a short fiber optic cable.

This breakthrough tackles a major bottleneck in modern networks: the bandwidth mismatch between fiber and wireless systems. The new scheme creates a unified infrastructure where both wired and wireless links can operate at extreme speeds using the same shared bandwidth.

Solving the fiber-wireless bottleneck

Today's networks struggle because fiber optic and wireless technologies use fundamentally different signal architectures and hardware. This mismatch prevents truly seamless, high-speed data flow between the two domains.

The new system overcomes this by using ultra-wideband integrated photonics. Its core components are electro-optic and optic-electro converters with an operational bandwidth exceeding 250 GHz.

This wideband, adaptable foundation allows the same set of devices to handle both fiber and wireless transmission without the typical bottlenecks or congestion.

Key components and the complex-biGRU algorithm

The system's record performance is powered by a custom machine learning algorithm. The researchers developed a complex bidirectional gated recurrent unit (complex-biGRU) algorithm to manage the high-speed data flow.

This algorithm works in tandem with the photonic hardware to enable the unprecedented data rates. The system's capabilities include:

• A single-lane fiber data rate of 512 Gbps for short-reach connections.
• A wireless data rate of 400 Gbps, a first for this type of transmission.
• An all-optically assisted scheme for ultra-broadband wireless access.

Demonstrating high-density video transmission

To prove its real-world potential, the team demonstrated a high-density access scenario. They successfully transmitted multichannel 8K video in real time across a massive 86 individual channels.

This transmission used a broad slice of the radio spectrum, from 138 GHz to 223 GHz. The demonstration shows the system's ability to handle the immense data loads required for future congested, wideband-access networks.

The path to unified, high-speed networks

The findings point toward a future of unified telecommunications infrastructure. The research demonstrates a practical path to building networks that are simultaneously high-speed, high-density, and low-latency.

By using a shared-bandwidth scheme for both fiber and wireless links, this approach could simplify system design. It moves beyond simply patching together disparate technologies and toward a genuinely integrated communication ecosystem.