Infinera Debuts Undersea Optical Transport Solution, Global Crossing Deploys

Infinera introduced its new submarine optical transport solution, which is designed to be deployed at land-based terminals of submarine networks. The platform, which has already been deployed by Global Crossing, offers submarine network operators a way to protect their investment in their subsea infrastructure while adding new capacity to the network via the Infinera Digital Optical Networks architecture.

Infinera claims several technical breakthroughs for its submarine solution. 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 for the Infinera submarine solution. The enhanced PICs are implemented in the new Infinera Submarine Line Module (SLM), which provides 100 Gbps of PIC-based DWDM capacity on every line card. With up to 16 SLM modules multiplexed onto a single fiber, the Infinera submarine solution can provide up to 160 wavelengths on existing submarine optical networks.

Infinera said the submarine solution has already been deployed by global carriers including Global Crossing, for a total of almost 50,000 subsea route-kilometers. Specifically, Global Crossing has deployed the Infinera submarine solution on its Mid-Atlantic Crossing (MAC) and its South American Crossing (SAC) networks, for a total of 26,000 route-kilometers.  http://www.infinera.com