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Sunday December 7, 2:35 PM
Copper wire competitive with fiber optic cable:
Researchers
Washington, Dec. 7 (ANI): Penn State engineers have developed and
simulation tested a copper wire transmission scheme for distributing a
broadband signal over local area networks (LANS) with a lower average bit
error rate than fiber optic cable that is 10 times more expensive.
"Our approach can improve the capability of existing local area
networks and shows that copper is a competitor for new installations in
the niche LAN market," says Dr. Mohsen Kavehrad, the W. L. Weiss professor
of electrical engineering and director of the Center for Information and
Communications Technology Research.
The Penn State approach responds to the IEEE challenge to specify a
signaling scheme for a next generation broadband copper Ethernet network
capable of carrying broadband signals of 10 gigabits per second.
"In the existing copper gigabit systems, each pair of wires carries 250
megabits per second. For a 10 gigabit system, each pair will have to carry
2.5 gigabits per sec," Kavehrad explains. "At these higher speeds, some
energy penetrates into the other wires and produces crosstalk."
The Penn State scheme eliminates crosstalk by using a new error
correction method they developed that jointly codes and decodes the signal
and, in decoding, corrects the errors.
The Penn State approach also takes account of the reduction or loss of
signal energy between one end of the cable and the other that can become
severe in 100 meter copper systems.
A MATLAB simulation has shown that the scheme is possible and can
achieve an average bit error rate of 10 to the minus 12 bits per second.
Fiber optic cable typically achieves 10 to the minus nine. The work is
continuing. (ANI)
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