Alcatel-Lucent 1620 SOFTNODE for submarine networks offers high density, small footprint

Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks, the submarine cables subsidiary of Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU), has introduced the 1620 SOFTNODE submarine line termination equipment (SLTE) platform. The system is designed to flexibly support transmission of 240 Tbps on multiple fiber pairs in a footprint smaller than current SLTE.

Each transmission line card in the system supports a variety of optical transmission rates -- 100, 200, 300 and 400 Gbps, Alcatel-Lucent says. Meanwhile, the platform is as much as 10X smaller than competing SLTE and offers power reduction of a factor of 2 or three, the company asserts.

Other features and benefits Alcatel-Lucent cites include:

• Support of transmission distances up to 14,000 km for multi-point of presence (multi-PoP) to multi-PoP network requirements via multi-degree nodes.
• Stepless tuning of optical transmission for both wet and dry plant via 48 software-configurable submarine modulation formats.
• A gridless architecture that enables tuning of any wavelength to 33 GHz with no fixed granularity.
• Engineered to support future application of 400 Gigabit Ethernet and software-defined networking (SDN) technologies.
• Transport of any Optical Transport Network (OTN) and GMPLS connection.
• Optimization of terrestrial backhaul networks by the reduction of the required number of fiber pairs to extend trans-oceanic capacity to inland PoPs and data centers.
  

Alcatel-Lucent says that GoTo Networks has chosen the 1620 SOFTNODE platform for the Australia West Express system, which will link Australia, the Middle East, and Africa. The system also completed a field trial over the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) system that demonstrated transmission of 12.6 Tbps per fiber pair.

For more information on high-speed transmission systems and suppliers, visit the Lightwave Buyer's Guide.