China sets world record for data transmission speed, paving the way for 6G.
A group of Chinese scientists has just announced that an integrated communication system combining fiber optic cables and mobile networks has achieved a world record speed of 512 Gbps (512 gigabits per second), creating an important stepping stone for 6G and artificial intelligence (AI) data centers.
According to research published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature (UK), researchers from Peking University, Pengcheng Laboratory, Shanghai University of Science and Technology, and the National Center for Optoelectronic Innovation of China have successfully developed a “convergent” communication system that seamlessly connects fiber optic networks and mobile networks.
This system achieves single-channel signal transmission speeds of up to 512 Gbps over fiber optic cable and 400 Gbps over mobile networks. To put this into perspective, at these speeds, the equivalent of dozens of 8K resolution movies can be transmitted in just one second.
Why integrate fiber optic and mobile networks?
Over the years, fiber optic and mobile networks have developed almost in parallel but separately. While fiber optic networks serve as the "backbone" of the Internet, transmitting data at extremely high speeds and with great stability, mobile networks (4G, 5G, and the future 6G) enable flexible connectivity for mobile devices, but are limited by bandwidth and interference.
The problem lies in the fact that these two systems have different signal structures and hardware. When data has to switch back and forth between optical and wireless media, transmission efficiency can be reduced, latency can increase, and signal interference can accumulate.
In the context of AI and cloud computing driving explosive data traffic growth, building a unified platform for both environments has become a pressing issue.
According to Wang Xingjun, one of the lead authors of the study at Peking University, the new system supports dual-mode transmission, allowing data to move flexibly across both fiber optic and mobile networks within the same architecture.
This approach helps reduce the differences between the two systems, limits noise accumulation during signal conversion, increases overall noise immunity, and optimizes bandwidth and latency.
Notably, the system's entirely optical architecture allows for integration with existing optical network infrastructure, reducing upgrade costs during actual deployment.
Testing with a large-scale 6G network scenario.
The research team also simulated a 6G access environment with a large number of users. The results showed that the system could transmit multi-channel 8K video in real time across 86 channels simultaneously, achieving bandwidth more than 10 times higher than the current 5G standard.
This demonstrates the potential for widespread application in AI data centers that need to process massive amounts of data, high-resolution virtual and augmented reality applications, and remote control systems requiring extremely low latency.
In addition to impressive speed, the system also demonstrates advantages in energy efficiency, cost, and scalability. This is crucial as future data centers and base stations consume increasingly more electricity.
According to the research team, this technology could be applied in 6G base stations and mobile data centers, and could help reshape the architecture of next-generation telecommunications networks.
In the race to build infrastructure for AI and 6G, the record speed of 512 Gbps is not just a symbolic number, but also demonstrates that the convergence between fiber optics and mobile networks is becoming key to the future of telecommunications.
