Infinera trials capacity-boosting tech with Canalink
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Infinera trials capacity-boosting tech with Canalink

Infinera has announced a successful trial with Canalink across its subsea cable that could see it upgrade capacity on the system 13-fold.

The test was carried out on Canalink’s 1,393km subsea cable system that connects the Conil landing point on the Spanish mainland with Tenerife in the Canary Islands. Conducted across three fully-loaded channel plans at 37.5 gigahertz (GHz), 50 GHz and 25 GHz channel spacing, the test validated advanced compensation techniques and new modulation schemes.

These included software-programmable quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) and 8QAM; Nyquist subcarriers, which offer an approximately 20 percent increase in reach compared to single-carrier transmission; and soft-decision forward error correction (SD-FEC) gain sharing, in which high-performance carriers can be paired with lower-performance carriers, mitigating the effects of optical non-linearities and increasing system capacity.

The results showed that Canalink could increase capacity on the system by up to 13-times.

“Infinera is committed to bringing advanced capabilities to the subsea market, and we are pleased to enable Canalink to maximize capacity on their systems,” said Scott Jackson, Infinera vice president, Subsea Business group. 

“This test validates the benefits of ICE4 Nyquist subcarriers and SD-FEC gain sharing, enabling subsea cables to move to higher modulation formats for increased fibre capacity and greater return on the asset."

Canalink, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the ITER group, owns a system of undersea fiber optic cables that link the Canary Islands with the Iberian Peninsula and the western coast of Africa.

“The successful field test with Infinera demonstrated that we can achieve approximately 13 times more capacity than we initially estimated on our subsea link,” said Carlos Suárez, general director of Canalink. 

“Infinera's Infinite Capacity Engine and its innovative technology designed for subsea operators prove that its deployment can enable us to protect our investment and maximize the use of our infrastructure.”




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