Coherent transmission specialist Acacia Communications (NASDAQ: ACIA) says it has demonstrated single-carrier 400-Gbps transmission across the 6,600-km MAREA submarine network. The demonstration used the company’s AC1200 Coherent Module on an evaluation platform.
The MAREA undersea cable runs betwee Virginia Beach, VA, and Bilbao, Spain. The submarine cable is owned by Microsoft and Facebook and deployed by Telxius (see “Microsoft, Facebook partner for MAREA undersea cable system”). As the sponsors’ data transmission demands continue to increase, MAREA was constructed using “open” principles that facilitate the addition of new technology and suppliers as needs warrant.
The AC1200 represents one such useful technology, Acacia asserts. Equipped with what Acacia calls “Fractional QAM modulation,” the optical module supported 400G transmission using approximately 4 bits/symbol, with a baud rate of nearly 70 Gbaud, Acacia reports. The exercise included the use of modulation formats with greater than 4 bits/symbol that enabled spectral efficiency of 6.41 b/s/Hz, the company added.
“Transmission of 400G over 6,600 km is a significant milestone and demonstrates what can be achieved with higher performance transmission optics combined with a well-designed line system,” said Mark Filer, principle optical engineer, Azure Networking, at Microsoft Corp. “This field demonstration of an advanced solution that is just becoming commercially available highlights the value of MAREA’s open architecture to evolve with the latest technology. By allowing early adoption of new technologies such as Acacia’s AC1200, we are able to increase the utilization of our deployed fiber, maximize our investment, and improve network capacity.”
The MAREA event is the second demonstration related to submarine networks announced for the AC1200 this month. ADVA used the AC1200 in a lab trial to demonstrate the ability of its FSP 3000 CloudConnect TeraFlex platform to transport 300 Gbps per wavelength over 6,800 km. ADVA described the demonstration as highlighting its platform’s ability to handle “trans-Atlantic distance with a fiber link typical of a cost-optimized submarine cable.”
The folks at MAREA, meanwhile, have conducted at least one other advanced technology trial this year, a demonstration with Infinera (see “Infinera touts submarine network spectral efficiency records”).
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