Aston University researchers have been awarded almost £500,000 to investigate whether new mathematical techniques could help existing fibre-optic cables carry more data, potentially reducing the need for costly investment in new infrastructure.

The four-year project is being led by Professor Yaroslav Prilepskiy and Professor Sergei Turitsyn from Aston Institute of Photonic Technologies, with £499,996 in funding from the Leverhulme Trust.

Fibre-optic cables carry internet traffic around the world, sending information as pulses of light through thin strands of glass. But as demand for data grows, there is a limit to how much information they can carry.

Increasing the power of the light signals does not automatically mean more data can be sent. Beyond a certain point, stronger signals become distorted and can interfere with other signals travelling through the same cable, making the information harder to receive accurately.

Yaroslav Prylepskiy, research fellow at the Aston Institute of Photonic Technologies, said:

"We tend to think of the internet as something that exists in the cloud, but much of it depends on physical infrastructure that has to work harder as demand grows. Building more capacity is not always simply a matter of laying more fibre. We also need to understand how to make the best possible use of the networks that are already in place. That is one of the reasons this research matters."

One way to increase capacity is to add more wavelengths or install more advanced fibre-optic technology. But both approaches can require significant investment in new equipment or infrastructure.

Scientists already have methods for correcting signal distortion at the receiving end of fibre-optic cables. However, these can require substantial computing power, making them difficult to use in real time on networks carrying large volumes of data.

The researchers want to find out whether a different mathematical approach could help overcome some of these limitations, allowing operators to get more out of the networks they already have.

The project, called Koopman Operator Method for Optical Communications (KOMET-COM), will use a mathematical technique called Koopman operator theory to develop a new way of modelling how light behaves inside fibre-optic cables.

The technique allows researchers to study complicated behaviour in a different mathematical way, making it easier to analyse. Unlike some existing methods, the Aston team wants to build a model that reflects what actually happens to light inside real fibre-optic cables.

Professor Sergei Turitsyn, director of the Aston Institute of Photonic Technologies at Aston University, added:

“One of the problems in high-speed broadband optical communications is that the mathematics describing what happens to light inside a fibre can become extremely complicated. The challenge is to find a way of capturing that behaviour accurately without making the calculations prohibitively demanding. Koopman operator theory gives us a different way of approaching this problem. What we want to establish is whether it can give us a model that is both practical and reliable enough to be useful in real communication systems.”

The researchers will test their approach using computer simulations and experimental data from Aston's optical communications testbed. They will assess how accurately it can model and correct signal distortion under realistic conditions, including signal loss and amplifier noise.

If successful, the research could help engineers correct some of the problems that affect light signals as they travel through cables. This could eventually allow existing fibre-optic networks to carry more data or transmit information over longer distances.

It could also reduce the amount of computing power needed to model how information travels through the networks.