“In 2021, the European Commission set a 2030 target of achieving gigabit connectivity in all EU households and 5G coverage for all populated areas. Considerable progress has already been made in the rollout of fixed very high capacity network (VHCN) connections across the EU“, Eurostat reported. VHCN connections are fibre connections or other networks offering similar bandwidth. Latvia ranks fifth among EU member states and comes ahead of both Estonia and Lithuania in the data. Latvian households have 90.7 % high-speed network coverage overall and 75.2 % coverage in low-population-density areas such as rural districts with fewer than 100 people per km2. By comparison, Lithuania has figures of 78.2 % (total) and 37.1 % (low density), while Estonia manages a 73.4 % (total) and 21.1 % (low density).
In this scenario, it’s worth mentioning that last year scientists from the Institute of Telecommunications of the Faculty of Electronics and Telecommunications of Riga Technical University (RTU) and their partners created an innovation in ICT that will allow information to be transmitted faster, more securely and further.
While the Swiss information technology (IT) company Swisscom has invested up to 20 million euros in Latvia for the coming years and employs around 300 highly qualified specialists. The decision on DevOps Riga is closely connected to the company’s strategy to become one of the leading technology development centres in Europe. The DevOps centre in Riga is the second one that the company has opened outside of Switzerland. The centre opening in Riga is related to Swisscom’s long-term strategy to develop its business outside Switzerland and establish one of the leading technology development centres in Europe by 2025.
“In the laboratory of the Communication Systems Technology Research Center of the RTU Telecommunications Institute, we have demonstrated that the optical frequency comb, generated on the whispering gallery microresonator, can be used in fibre optic communication systems. It allows transmitting information at a distance of 20 kilometres,” said Jurģis Poriņš, Head of the Faculty of Electronics and Telecommunications. A whispering gallery fashion microresonator is a glass bead fused to an optical fibre, where the generation of a frequency comb is initiated. Each carrier signal generated by the frequency comb allows replacing a single laser light source, creating a low-cost, energy-efficient solution for data transmission.
“With one laser beam, we excite the resonance in a microsphere, obtaining four narrow spectral lines that we can use as a data carrier. If we wanted to get four lines with the current technology, we would need four laser sources”, explained the Jurģis Poriņš. In cooperation with AFFOC Solutions, the innovation was tested in real-life conditions, testing potential commercial applications. Scientists and company representatives are convinced that the solution could be integrated into communication systems in the coming years. It would allow transmitting information at higher speeds, over longer distances and to a larger number of users with less signal delay and higher security.
This developed prototype for telecommunication applications is considered to be an important result of the cooperation between academia and the industry, which is represented in the project by AFFOC Solutions. Such cooperation directly promotes the creation of new knowledge and development of technologies, as well as raises Latvia’s competitiveness in the ICT sector.