Infinera, Nissho show 8-Tbps transmission over dispersion-shifted fiber

Infinera Corp. (NASDAQ: INFN) and its Japanese partner, Nissho Electronics, say they have carried out a successful demonstration using the Infinera DTN-X platform to deliver 8 Tbps via superchannels across 800 km of ITU-T G.653 dispersion-shifted fiber (DSF).

The companies claim the demonstration at the NET Frontier Center marks a significant achievement for delivery of high-capacity optical transmission over DSF fiber. DSF fiber, widely deployed throughout Japan, has proven to be a challenge in deploying high-capacity DWDM transport over long distances due to its low chromatic dispersion in the C-Band. As a result, operators have had to use expensive L-Band technology to achieve long-haul quality performance from DSF fiber.

Infinera’s DTN-X platform offers long-haul 500-Gbps superchannels that feature what Infinera claims is world-class polarization-mode dispersion (PMD) compensation performance (see “Infinera, Verizon report real-time PMD performance record”). Using this platform, Infinera demonstrated that it was possible to transmit 8 Tbps of superchannel capacity on the C-Band over 800 km of DSF. Infinera says this same capacity can be extended to well over 2,500 km when using polarization-multiplexed QPSK on the Infinera DTN-X with non-DSF fiber, highlighting the unique challenges of DSF in Japan.

Infinera also showcased the FlexCoherent capabilities of the system, demonstrating the ability to software-select different modulation formats including polarization-multiplexed QPSK and BPSK to optimize both reach and capacity. This capability enables service providers to leverage their current infrastructure by deploying the latest multi-terabit, long-haul optical transport on existing DSF fiber. The demonstration also showed 100 Gigabit Ethernet service provisioned in less than 100 seconds.

“This test truly demonstrates the value of the DTN-X platform to service providers with DSF assets,” said Kimitaka Sato, executive officer at Nissho. “In the past, service providers may not have been able to run even multiple 10-Gbps transmission over this kind of fiber. Infinera’s solution proves that we can run the very latest super-channel technology at 8 Tbps on DSF, which is impressive.”

“This trial is unique because it not only achieves world-class reach and capacity over a very difficult type of optical fiber, it shows how quickly capacity can be turned up for service providers today,” said Dave Welch, Infinera co-founder, executive vice president and chief strategy officer.

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