Aston University helps tackle the soaring data centre energy use

Dr Aleksandr Donodin, based in the Aston Institute of Photonic Technologies (AIPT), has received just one of 12 fellowship grants from The Royal Academy of Engineering to support his work examining fibre-optic networks to find solutions to the increasing power demands of data centres. Dr Donodin will be exploring the use of the networks and bringing together bismuth-doped fibre amplifiers which have tiny amounts of the metal bismuth added to them, and optical frequency combs which are used to measure and control light very accurately. It will be the first time this combination is explored in detail and if successful could cut power consumption in optical networks by 30–50% per bit. It will also enable O-band range of light wavelengths to reach transmission capacities beyond 200 terabytes per second.