A tiny solar panel in a cable: How fiber optics is changing the way power is transmitted

get broadband without a landline
(Image credit: Shutterstock / bluebay)

Earlier this month, communication specialists HUBER +SUHNER launched a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) that powered an active antenna using fiber optics rather than more traditional copper wires, replacing in certain cases, power-over-ethernet (PoE) with power-over-fibre (PoF), for almost a decade.

Our SSD/HDD guides

A Samsung 980 Pro SSD on a table in front of its packaging

(Image credit: Future)

Best external hard drives: Expand your storage easily
Best rugged hard drives: Protect your data on the go
Best secure drives: Keep your data intact
Best portable SSDs: Solid, fast and compact
Best NAS drives: Data resilience for businesses

Doing so allows data and power to be transmitted over only one cable; now that has been the case for more than a century as copper wires were used for analog communications but demands for huge amounts of data coupled with advances in photonics means that something that was until recently only limited to very niche applications.

Copper, whilst ubiquitous, has some intrinsic disadvantages: it cannot be installed where high electric voltages occur, it can generate an electric spark, it is sensitive to strong magnetic field and is relatively thicker/heavier than fiber optics.

How does it work?

A source (typically a laser diode) emits light, usually monochromatically, at one end and a photovoltaic cell collects that light on the other end. The process is called optical power beaming and is essentially a smaller, more focused take on how a roof-based solar panel works.

While the latter has an efficiency of about 25%, power-over-fibre can reach up to 70% but overall, once other factors are accounted for, the power conversion efficiency, according to photonics specialist RP Photonics, can go up to 30%. Not good enough for a portable power station for example or to power a laptop.

Clearly, it is not going to replace copper wholesale across power equipment; it still requires a lot of discrete components and is far costlier than copper deployment. However, with improving technology and mass production, one can expect power over fiber to make a much bigger dent in a lot of scenarios. 

In the case of H+S, it means enabling an increased distance of a few kilometers between the source and the receive system, several orders of magnitude compared to copper. In the long term, it may help simplify the deployment of FTx (fiber to anywhere) with fiber to the room being the last frontier - and PoF will play a huge role in that as well as in 5G, 6G and iOT deployment because of the number of low-power antenna units and nano/pico/femto cells.

There is a huge drive for research in what could be a thriving sector: more than 20 conference papers have been submitted to the IEEE, the world's largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology since the beginning of 2022. 

Desire Athow
Managing Editor, TechRadar Pro

Désiré has been musing and writing about technology during a career spanning four decades. He dabbled in website builders and web hosting when DHTML and frames were in vogue and started narrating about the impact of technology on society just before the start of the Y2K hysteria at the turn of the last millennium.

Read more
Nvidia Quantum-X and Spectrum-X Silicon Photonics
Nvidia is planning post-copper 1.6Tbps network tech to connect millions of GPUs as it unveils photonics networking gear at GTC 2025
Digital data on a globe
Unlocking the full potential of financial services with all-photonic networks
A SCUBA Diver Checks An Undersea Cable
Startup wants to mitigate risk of state-actor underwater fibre optic cable sabotage by using a decades-old technique
A graphic showing fleet tracking locations over a city.
From smart cities to streaming: 2025 wireless tech predictions
Satellite
NATO wants to build an alternative satellite-based internet to be used in case of emergency
3d rendering of a submarine power cable on the seabed
Subsea internet cables can now ‘listen’ for sabotage using irregular pulses of light
Latest in Pro
Code Skull
Interpol operation arrests 300 suspects linked to African cybercrime rings
Insecure network with several red platforms connected through glowing data lines and a black hat hacker symbol
Multiple H3C Magic routers hit by critical severity remote command injection, with no fix in sight
ai quantization
Shadow AI: the hidden risk of operational chaos
An abstract image of a lock against a digital background, denoting cybersecurity.
Critical security flaw in Next.js could spell big trouble for JavaScript users
Digital clouds against a blue background.
Navigating the growing complexities of the cloud
Zendesk Relate 2025
Zendesk Relate 2025 - everything you need to know as the event unfolds
Latest in News
Netflix Ads
Netflix adds HDR10+ support – great news for Samsung TV owners, but don't expect LG and Sony to do the same any time soon
FiiO FX17 IEMs
Our favorite budget audiophile brand unveils wired earbuds with 26(!) drivers, electrostatic units, USB-C ultra-Hi-Res Audio, and a not-so-budget price
Nvidia RTX 5080 against a yellow TechRadar background
RTX 5080 24GB version teased by MSI - is it time to admit that 16GB isn't enough for 4K?
A close up of the PlayStation symbol at the top of a PS5 Slim console with a white brick background
Sony has dropped a new PS5 update, improving activities and adding more emoji support
girl using laptop hoping for good luck with her fingers crossed
Windows 11 24H2 seems to be a massive fail – so Microsoft apparently working on 25H2 fills me with hope... and fear
Code Skull
Interpol operation arrests 300 suspects linked to African cybercrime rings