News

2 September 2009

 

Infinera adds SOAs to PICs in new submarine system

Infinera Corp of Sunnyvale, CA, USA, a vertically integrated manufacturer of digital optical network systems incorporating its own indium phosphide-based photonic integrated circuits (PICs), is launching a new submarine solution to bring the benefits of photonic integration (including enhanced capacity, new services, and rapid deployment) to undersea networks.

Designed to be deployed at land-based terminals, the system is already shipping to customers and is currently carrying live traffic for Global Crossing.

Carriers worldwide are seeing increasing bandwidth demand on submarine networks, driven by the growing pervasiveness of the Internet and network usage, says the firm. Many of those networks are reaching the limits of their current capacity. Infinera says that its new submarine solution offers network operators a cost-effective way to protect their investment in subsea infrastructure while adding new capacity to the network and taking advantage of other features of the firm’s Digital Optical Networks architecture. The system enables carriers to deliver additional capacity, typically including a doubling of the number of wavelengths on their subsea networks, while providing rapid deployment, ease of operation, and flexibility of the Infinera platform. With the ability to use one optical platform for their subsea networks and their terrestrial networks, operators can deploy an end-to-end solution with significant savings in capital and operating cost and simplified operation, reckons Infinera.

For the new submarine system, Infinera’s large-scale photonic integrated circuits (PICs) have been enhanced with the addition of semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) to provide trans-oceanic optical reach. The enhanced PICs are implemented in Infinera’s new Submarine Line Module (SLM), which provides 100Gb/s of PIC-based dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) capacity on each line card. Up to 16 SLM modules multiplexed onto a single fiber can provide up to 160 wavelengths on existing submarine optical networks. In addition, new technology is incorporated to provide what is claimed to be significant cost and space savings compared to traditional DWDM submarine networks.

The submarine system has already been deployed by global carriers over a total of almost 50,000 subsea route-kilometers, including by Global Crossing on its Mid-Atlantic Crossing (MAC) and its South American Crossing (SAC) networks (a total of 26,000 route-kilometers) without the need to deploy a completely new subsea network. Software automation makes provisioning quicker and easier: augmentations can be provided in days or weeks instead of up to 6-12 months on traditional submarine networks.

Global Crossing first deployed an Infinera terrestrial network in 2006. The new subsea network extends the reach of the firm's existing terrestrial digital optical architecture over its subsea facilities, enabling single-key-stroke optical network provisioning end-to-end to on-net cities between continents, says Jim Watts, Global Crossing's VP of transport engineering.

The submarine networking market has grown strongly in recent years, as growing trans-continental Internet traffic has risen sharply, propelled by increasing adoption of Internet-capable mobile phones, high-speed Internet connections to homes and businesses, and growing prosperity in underdeveloped markets, where hundreds of millions of people have begun using Internet technology. According to data from analyst firm Ovum, the submarine networking market rose 56% to $858m in 2008, and will grow a further 23% this year to $1.06bn, followed by 20% in 2010 to $1.27bn. In contrast, the total optical networking market is expected to fall 5.5% this year to $15.4bn then rebound by rise 5% in 2010.

“Subsea cable operators are struggling to increase capacity... Installing a new cable plant is both time consuming and expensive, therefore terminal upgrades are becoming very attractive,” says Ron Kline, Ovum's research director, Optical Networks. “Operators are looking for more channels and higher rates per channel (40G and ultimately 100G) through terminal-only upgrades so they can postpone the time and expense of putting in new subsea systems... Integrating SLTE [submarine line terminal equipment] and terrestrial systems provide an attractive solution for operators looking to simplify operations and reduce costs,” he adds.

“The submarine market represents the latest segment to adopt Infinera as its vendor of choice, continuing Infinera’s momentum in penetrating new applications within the optical transport market,” says Infinera's CEO Jagdeep Singh. “Submarine network operators are facing the challenge of bandwidth demand expanding much faster than revenue, and the Infinera submarine solution will help them address technical and economic challenges, while getting the most out of their infrastructure,” he adds.

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