Infinera and SEACOM Test 500 Gbps PICs

Infinera and SEACOM, a leading pan-African telecommunications provider, has completed testing of five 100 Gigabit per second (100 Gbps) coherent optical signals transmitted over 1732 km. The 500 Gbps trial ran over and was looped back across SEACOM's newly built 930 km Dark Fibre Africa (DFA) fiber route which links the SEACOM Mtunzini cable landing station in KwaZulu Natal to the Teraco data center in Johannesburg.


The trial used Infinera's 500 Gbps Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs), each of which integrates five 100 Gbps coherent channels onto a single chip. The PICs were used for both transmitting and receiving the five 100 Gbps signals during the trial, the first time the PICs have been used to transmit and provide real time coherent processing for all 500 Gbps simultaneously on a production network. The trial also demonstrated Infinera's FlexCoherent functionality by switching between QPSK and BPSK modulation.


Infinera said it plans to deliver the 500 Gbps PICs as part of a system which integrates 5 Terabit per second (Tbps) OTN switching and 100 Gbps coherent optical transmission in early 2012. http://www.infinera.com