May 11 2010
At the SubOptic tradeshow in Yokohama Japan today, Apollo, a UK based company which owns and operates one of the most advanced transatlantic fiber optic cable systems in existence today, and Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris:ALU)(NYSE:ALU) announced the achievement of an industry milestone with the successful demonstration of the transmission of approximately three terabits per second (Tbit/s) of data, based on 40Gbit/s channels, per fibre pair in a submarine network.
Performed over Apollo's north cable system linking the US and the UK, a distance of 6,221 km, using Alcatel-Lucent advanced technology the original design capacity of the system was almost quadrupled (72 channels at 40Gb/s, all error-free). The test demonstrated for the first time on a live system a capacity increase of a factor of two compared to the maximum capacity achievable based on 10Gbit/s channels.
"Capacity upgrades of submarine networks using existing fibre are critical for operators as existing networks approach full capacity and as terrestrial networks start supporting 40Gbit/s. These two factors drive the need to increase the capacity of submarine networks, seamlessly handing-off traffic to keep the highest level of efficiency end-to-end," said Richard Elliott, Managing Director of Apollo."
"The demonstration of 40Gbit/s technology over the Apollo system is great news for our customers. We have shown that Apollo can support the interface types and sheer volume of capacity required by our users for the foreseeable future," Elliott continued.
"Alcatel-Lucent has been deploying '40Gbit/s ready' submarine networks over the past few years, anticipating a market trend that is now consolidating as operators are exploring advanced technologies to migrate their networks for optimised service delivery. With this test we take another step in making 40Gbit/s a reality," stated Philippe Dumont, head of Alcatel-Lucent's submarine network activity. "By supporting both 10Gbit/s and 40Gbit/s signals, our solution enables cost-effective migration without re-engineering the network, while maximizing the use of existing assets."
For this trial, the Alcatel-Lucent 1620 Light Manager submarine line terminal used a phase shift keying (PSK)-based modulation format with next-generation coherent detection. The system was fully loaded with 72 working 40Gbit/s channels. Signal processing associated with coherent technology will allow operators to deal with transmission impairments in a cost-effective and automated manner, and also allow performance tuning through the life of the system. This flexibility in implementing different modulation formats enables Alcatel-Lucent to offer service providers the best technology option for new deployments and for existing networks that need to migrate to higher capacities without any impact on existing traffic and network operations.
Source: http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/