OFS used last week’s OFC exhibition in Anaheim, California, to introduce TeraWave SCUBA Ocean optical fibre, which is optimised for 100Gb/s optical transmission and above in submarine cable systems.
Using a combination of the industry’s largest effective area, excellent cabling performance in the C- and L-bands, and low attenuation, the new fibre enables reliable coherent transmission at 100Gb/s and beyond over transoceanic distances at the highest channel counts, the company claims.
TeraWave SCUBA optical fibre is designed to support transmission over distances up to 12,000km using advanced modulation formats and coherent detection, such as transoceanic networks where extreme distances between shore end terminals limit the optical signal-to-noise ratio for DWDM transmission.
Applications without repeaters, such as coastal festoons and deep-water crossings, can also take advantage of the large effective area of TeraWave SCUBA Ocean Fiber, which permits higher power handling capacity without additional distortion, meaning more channels at higher speeds over longer distances before amplification is required.
Compared to earlier generations of submarine optical fibres, TeraWave SCUBA reduces the performance limitations introduced by fibre nonlinearities and amplifier noise, thereby supporting higher spectral efficiency and longer repeater spacings.
The fibre has large effective area of 153μm2 that reduces nonlinearities, and ultra-low attenuation of 0.155 dB/km at 1550nm that reduces signal loss. Together these properties allow higher signal powers to be launched into the span and reduce amplifier noise.
“The silica core and ultra-large area features of the TeraWave SCUBA optical fibre deliver significant performance margin beyond that needed for transmitting 100Gb/s over transpacific distances,” said Andrew Oliviero, senior director of product line management and research and development for optical fibre, cable and connectivity products for OFS.
The additional performance margin can be used to upgrade to denser signal constellations for increased spectral efficiency as new transponders become commercially available thereby providing an upgrade path and ability to expand system capacity, he adds.
TeraWave SCUBA Optical Fiber is manufactured using OFS’ proprietary manufacturing process, which produces a fibre with low water peak (LWP) performance and ultra-low polarisation mode dispersion (PMD). It is fully compliant with the ITU G.654 standard for cut-off-shifted fibre.