Alcatel-Lucent delivers 31 Tbps in submarine cable experiment

Bell Labs researchers conducted a test where they transmitted 31 Tbps over 7200 km on one fiber at its parent Alcatel-Lucent's (NYSE: ALU) Innovation City campus in Villarceaux near Paris.

Leveraging Bell Labs' 200 Gbps single-carrier data channel work, the vendor said that it achieved the 31 Tbps speeds with a "span--the distance between amplifiers maintaining the entire length--of 100km."

Since data recovery at these speeds and distances is challenging, Bell Labs researchers used a combination of detection, modulation, transmission, and signal processing techniques with advanced error correcting coding.  

During the experiment, the vendor used 155 lasers, each of which operated a different frequency and carrying 200 Gbps over a 50 GHz frequency grid to enhance the performance of a traditional WDM system, which today carry speeds of up to 100G.

The technical feats achieved in Alcatel-Lucent's trial may not be commercially ready for a number of years, but they could come in handy for cable systems such as Seaborn Networks' Seabras-1, a new 10,500 km fiber optic cable that will provide a direct route between New York and Sao Paulo.

For more:
- see the release

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