Alcatel-Lucent, Apollo transmit 8 Tbps on submarine network fiber pair

Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks (ASN), the undersea cable network subsidiary of Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU), has announced another high-speed optical transmission milestone, this one reached with submarine network operator Apollo. The two say they have demonstrated a capacity of 8 Tbps per fiber pair on the Apollo South undersea cable system that connects France and the United States.

The demonstration follows a previously announced ASN lab trial that showed transmission of 300 Gbps over 10,000 km (see "Alcatel-Lucent uses 8QAM to transmit 300 Gbps over 10,000 km in lab").

The trial with Apollo leveraged ASN's 1620 Light Manager submarine line terminal, enhanced with a variety of proprietary 100-Gbps coherent transmission technology. The Alcatel-Lucent technology included detection techniques, error correction coding, and proprietary modulation and pulse-shaping schemes, wrapped together to enable what an ASN press release described as "smart spectral engineering." The capability enables the 1620 to leverage a flexible WDM grid to match each channel format to line performance.

ASN says that it plans to pair the spectral engineering capability with "next-generation technology" via its 1620 SOFTNODE product to increase capacity per fiber pair by more than 10%. It also expects advances in error correction coding and pulse shaping to support more than 10 Tbps per fiber pair.

The Apollo submarine cable system comprises a pair of transatlantic fiber-optic cables. Apollo North connects the United Kingdom and the U.S.; Apollo South, as previously noted, links France and the U.S. (see "Alcatel-Lucent completes 100G upgrade of Apollo undersea cable").

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