Infinera Products

The worldwide growth in Internet traffic and bandwidth connectivity extends from terrestrial networks to festoon, regional and trans-oceanic submarine networks. The Infinera submarine solution enables service providers to deploy a common optical transport solution across metro, regional and long-haul terrestrial backhaul networks. By implementing Infinera's latest photonic integrated circuit technology and a new compact solution for full-band dispersion compensation, the Infinera submarine solution enables submarine network operators to increase capacity on their networks while taking advantage of all the operational benefits of Infinera's digital architecture.

Key Benefits of the Infinera Submarine Solution include:

Increase Capacity: The Infinera DTN enables service providers to upgrade existing submarine cables with coherent 40Gb/s waves with 25GHz channel spacing, enabling up to a doubling of total cable capacity up to 160 wavelengths.

Faster Speed of Deployment: Infinera's simplified design makes it possible to install and commission submarine network upgrades in a fraction of the time it takes on a traditional DWDM system. With Infinera's Bandwidth Virtualization™, services can be added in minutes or days, as compared to the weeks or months it can take on a traditional DWDM system.

New Services: The Infinera submarine system can support new services, such as Gigabit Ethernet, 10GbE, 40G (Ethernet and SONET/SDH), and 100 Gigabit Ethernet, as well as many other service types. Many traditional SLTE systems cannot support newer services.

Better Space Utilization: The Infinera submarine solution can fit in as little as 5% of the space required for equivalent capacity as compared to traditional SLTE systems. This is achieved through the space-saving features of Infinera's photonic integrated circuits and the new Infinera DCM3 dispersion compensation module. (See below for details on the DCM3).

Investment Protection: When a submarine network nears its full capacity, the network operator often faces the prospect of building a new submarine network at a cost which can often be hundreds of millions of dollars. Deployment of the Infinera submarine solution can add years of life to an operator's existing subsea infrastructure by providing up to twice the number of wavelengths. In addition, the digital operations of the Infinera DTN as SLTE can allow the operator to reduce operating expenses and simplify operations, further improving the operator's return on invested capital.

End-to-End Wavelength Management: The Infinera Submarine solution can provide end-to-end wavelength management across submarine and terrestrial networks, simplifying network management and speeding network upgrades. In addition, an end-to-end Infinera terrestrial and submarine network provides capex savings by eliminating the need for back-to-back transponders.

Key Elements of the Infinera Submarine Solution

The Infinera DTN as SLTE comprises several elements optimized for upgrading existing submarine cable systems including:

• 100Gb/s PIC-based Submarine Line Modules (SLM), supporting optical transmission over submarine cables;
• Tributary Adapter Modules (TAM) providing client service interfaces;
• Band Multiplexing Modules (BMM2) enabling optical multiplexing of multiple SLM modules;
• Dispersion Compensation Module (DCM3) which integrates all dispersion compensation into a single element;
• Band-Pass Filter (BPF) allowing the SLM wavelengths to be matched to the amplifier chain wavelength range.

Submarine Line Module: The SLMs provide up to 100Gb/s of PIC-based multi-wavelength capacity in a single circuit pack. Each SLM provides a single fiber output onto which are multiplexed up to 10 wavelengths operating at 11.1Gb/s each, compliant with a 25GHz channel spacing on the ITU-T G.694.1 wavelength grid to enable multiplexing of up to 160-wavelengths on a single fiber. New 40Gb/s submarine line modules (SLM-80) provide 2 coherent 40Gb/s waves, which support full tunability across the C-Band at 25GHz spacing. The SLM-80 supports FlexCoherent modulation technology, which allow each of the channels to be individually configured to either PM-QPSK or PM-BPSK modulation scheme, thus optimizing reach versus spectral efficiency over a given submarine link.

Tributary Adapter Module: TAMs are pluggable interfaces for the termination of client signals. Different TAM modules can be equipped in a "mix and match" fashion into any TAM slot without constraint. The wide range of service interfaces supported by the Infinera DTN, combined with Infinera's unique Bandwidth Virtualization™ architecture also enables submarine network operators to expand the range of services supported across their undersea networks. The Infinera DTN SLTE provides support for SONET/SDH services at 2.5G, 10G or 40G, as well as Ethernet services at 1Gb/s (GigE), 10Gb/s (10GbE) in both LAN and WAN PHY configurations, 40Gb/s (40GE) and 100Gb/s (100GE). TAMs support a multitude of other service types, such as digital video (SD-SDI and HD-SDI), Fibre Channel (1G, 2G, 4G, 8G and 10G), and OTN interfaces (OTU1, OTU2, OTU1e, OTU2e).

Band Multiplexing Module: The DTN used in SLTE applications uses the BMM2 to optically multiplex/de-multiplex the signals from multiple SLMs onto a single output fiber. The BMM2 also integrates optical amplifiers to amplify the DWDM signal before transmission into the undersea fiber cable. The BMM2 is housed in the DTN chassis to provide power and size consolidation. The BMM2 provides an insertion point for DCM, and optical monitor ports for testing and maintenance. BMMs for use in SLTE applications are available with either 50Ghz or 25GHz channel spacing, supporting up to 80 or 160 wavelengths per fiber, respectively.

Dispersion Compensation Module: The DCM3 module is specifically designed for use in SLTE applications to provide full-band compensation of residual chromatic dispersion of all DWDM channels after transmission over the submarine fiber plant. The DCM3 module provides a variable value of dispersion compensation for each DWDM channel across the entire fiber operating range. The specific dispersion compensation slope and DCM values are matched to cable characteristics, and three ranges of full-band operation are supported for different cable types. Typically the DCM3 modules would be used to provide both pre- and post-compensation of residual dispersion. The DCM3 provides residual chromatic dispersion compensation in a single, compact module. This provides significant space and cost savings versus typical SLTE DCM solutions that use per-channel Dispersion Compensating Fiber (DCF) spools. This greatly simplifies engineering complexity and significantly reduces deployment times.

Band-Pass Filter:The BPF module used in SLTE applications adapts Infinera SLTE output from the SLMs to the existing submarine cable system operating spectrum. The BPF filters out SLM waves that are outside of the operating range of the undersea EDFA repeaters. In addition the BPF supports an express add/drop function to allow pass-through of SLTE monitoring channels (ie: Line Monitoring Equipment or LME) from the existing 3rd-party submarine system. The BPF output connects to the submarine cable, and includes the combined output of the DWDM waves from SLM and the monitoring wavelengths from the LME (where applicable) into the wet plant.

Submarine Control Module: The SCM provides hardware interface for monitoring wet plant EDFAs to enable inter-working with 3rd-party undersea repeaters and equalizers (TEQ). It also provides idle channel insertion with two integrated, tunable laser sources for power balancing on low channel counts.