Telstra has validated Infinera’s Advanced Coherent Toolkit (ACT) for super-channels.
This new technology will cover the Telstra Endeavour subsea cable stretching 9,000 kilometers between Sydney, Australia and Oahu, Hawaii and extract the maximum capacity from subsea and long haul terrestrial cable systems carrying super-channels — whether for new large area fibers or existing cables.
In trials on a range of next-generation super-channel coherent modulation technologies conducted late last year, two unique super-channel based capabilities were successfully demonstrated in the trial — Nyquist subcarriers and Soft Decision Forward Error Correction (SD-FEC) gain sharing.
Infinera said the trial validated the benefit of Nyquist subcarriers that have been shown in other studies to offer around a 20 percent increase in reach compared to single carrier transmission. In addition, the trial validated SD-FEC gain sharing in which carriers with the highest performance can be paired with carriers with lower Optical Signal to Noise Ratio (OSNR) to improve performance.
Other capabilities demonstrated as part of this trial include a new Matrix Enhanced Phase Shift Keying (ME-PSK) modulation technique that handily surpasses Binary Phase Shift Key (BPSK) reach performance; and the new, high-gain SD-FEC algorithm.
“The comprehensive modulation and compensation techniques in our Advanced Coherent Toolkit enable individual carriers and subcarriers in the super-channel to maximize the overall reach and capacity of the customer’s fiber,” said Scott Jackson, VP of Infinera’s Subsea Business Group. “For example, leveraging these techniques allows cables that previously could only support BPSK to move to higher modulation formats in the future, or support a mix of formats across carriers and subcarriers, for increased fiber capacity and a better return on the asset. This next generation of coherent technology has the potential to dramatically extend the useful life for existing cable systems while also improving the performance of new cables.”
