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Oh man, that has to be one of the best inside physics jokes, ever.
Advertising agencies love video on the Internet. It lets us deliver our intended message, it lets us drive emotional response and it gives us a point of difference versus others in social media efforts. The problem with video on the Web is that it sucks bandwidth and, even on broadband connections, can result in choppy play. Nothing is worse than having an intended message bombed out because it keeps hiccuping. However, a team of optical engineers have devised a way to revitalize light signals being sent down optical fibers, enabling them to send more information down the wires. The result could be a perfect stream of video.
Conventionally, data is sent as a series of on-off light pulses, where each pulse encodes as a series of on-off light pulses, where each pulse encodes a single bit of information. More data can potentially be squeezed onto a stream of light by modifying the phase of each light pulse in a measurable way. Even greater carrying capacity can be achieved using light at several intensity levels. However, light signals are gradually distorted by interacting with the fiber – a process known as attenuation (hence the headline).
Associate Creative Director at bloomfield knoble