The cost of deploying fiber-optic connections to homes could be dramatically reduced by new hardware designed and tested by University College London (UCL) researchers.

While major advances have been made in core fiber-optic networks, they often terminate in cabinets far from residential users. The so called "last mile" that connects households to the global Internet via the cabinet is still largely built with copper cables, as the optical receiver needed to read fiber-optic signals is too expensive to have in every home.

The "last mile" that connects households to the Internet is still built largely with copper cables. Image credit: Pixabay.Researchers led by Dr. Sezer Erkilinc, of UCL's Electronic and Electrical Engineering Department, believe they have solved the "last mile" challenge by designing a simplified optical receiver that improves sensitivity and network reach compared to existing technologies. The receiver, which contains just a quarter of the detectors used in a conventional coherent optical receiver, can be mass produced cheaply while maintaining the quality of the optical signal.

"We achieved this by applying a combination of two techniques," says Dr. Seb Savory, previously at UCL and now a lecturer at the University of Cambridge. "First, a coding technique often used in wireless communications was used to enable the receiver to be insensitive to the polarization of the incoming signals. Second, we deliberately offset the receiver laser from the transmitter laser, with the additional benefit that this allows the same single optical fiber to be used for both upstream and downstream data.”

http://insights.globalspec.com/article/2266/new-hardware-could-expand-fiber-optic-the-last-mile