Infinera has successfully completed of a series of submarine field trials over MAREA, a 6,600km submarine cable between Virginia Beach, Virginia and Bilbao, Spain. The trials used the company’s fourth-generation Infinite Capacity Engine (ICE4) advanced coherent technology to help achieve new records for trans-Atlantic real-time spectral efficiency.
Details of the trial were presented by Scott Jackson, Infinera Subsea CTO, at the Submarine Networks World conference, who said that the results had been record breaking. These included 6.21b/s/Hz over 6,644km, translating to a fibre capacity of 26.2 Tb/s; and 4.46b/s/Hz over 13,210km for 18.6Tb/s fibre capacity. 4.46 b/s/Hz over 13,210 km for 18.6 Tb/s fibre capacity.
To achieve these results, Infinera used several technologies such as precision, multi-carrier common wavelocking based on the company’s large-scale photonic integrated circuit (PIC), digitally synthesized subcarriers with ‘near Nyquist’ pulse shaping, enabled by the ICE4 real-time coherent digital signal processor, and operation over a high-optical power, large-area optical fibre cable.
Dr David Welch, co-founder and chief strategy and technology officer at Infinera commented: ‘We were thrilled to have an opportunity to work with a major internet content provider to demonstrate Infinera’s leading innovation in spectral efficiency over the MAREA cable system.’
This announcement was closely followed by the news that Infinera has closed its acquisition of Coriant, having declared its intent to purchase the business in July of this year (see Infinera to accelerate vertical integration with Coriant acquisition).
