Late to the thread, but I took part of this research (7th author in the list). I worked on the signal processing, information coding etc and is happy to answer any questions :-)
Does this work imply that the same tech could create ultra-high-speed switches that could match this bandwidth, thereby routing and propagating, and not just flow between two points?
Optical saves a heck of a lot of power, and is obviously much faster than copper, so that's the way it's all going.
The longer answer requires reliable and appropriately sized/cost transceivers to get the data back to electrical to match the speed of the optical, and those are going to be a while coming, and this tech is still in the lab.
At the top end subsea cables have very high cost and traditionally bulky transceivers, and it's all about data volume, not switching.
At the other end of the scale is inside the data centre, where most switching needs to occur, there is a move towards optical interconnections and co-packaged switches. (1 and 2)
what are the optical link budgets in this 8 km dark fiber path?
what's the tx launch power?
what's the frequency bottom end and top end, in nanometers or THz? does this all run in the normal ITU DWDM range from approx. 1528nm up to 1568nm, or wider than that?
I’d say that there is at least a 10 year delay between the lab and commercial deployment. Even then we are talking about deployment in large fiber systems and not to the home.
However, not all ideas in the lab ever make it into deployment.
We used constellation shaping and a rate adaptive code to tailor tailor the bitrate of each channel. It varied between something along 64-QAM and 256-QAM depending on the SNR in the channel.
Post processing times were not too bad. It ran on a standard desktop computer and gave an estimate of the data rate in about a minute (can’t remember exactly). Of course, compared to actual transmission that is terrible slow, but that was only due to the implementation and need of this experiment.
I can’t answer for the chip aspect (which is the truly novel part of this research), but many of the signal processing and coding techniques are being deployed in new optical transmission systems. Constellation shaping and rate adaptive coding were two techniques we used in this paper to ensure that individual channels were as ideally utilized as possible.
Devil's advocate here. How do you feel about the social significance of this type of work? Do you think "enough bandwidth" is a thing? If only the cost drops further, will it affect society? If we can already stream anything in the collective consciousness within seconds, what is the purpose of more? Is it likely to enable unnecessary levels of video surveillance by state actors?
I must confess that I have never been concerned along those lines.
I have thought a lot more about the environmental impact of transmission technology. It is a massively energy consuming industry and the expectation is to provide more capacity, while the expectations on efficiency do not add up to an actually reduced energy use.
I appreciate your honesty. You are not alone in working without considering social impact, it's rife in tech and I am previously guilty too.
Alzheimer's seems a challenge! Here in China they apparently approximate it for research purposes by dosing primates with MDMA... should be easy to find volunteers!
BTW, congrats on your success.