Cisco's NCS 1004 platform was successfully tested over MAREA, the 6,600 km subsea cable system connecting the United States to southern Europe (Virginia Beach, Virginia to Bilbao, Spain).
Several channel capacity combinations were tested to maximize the performance and spectral efficiency on the cable. For the Virginia to Bilbao trial, 400G error-free performance was demonstrated; channels with record spectral efficiency of 6.445 b/s/Hz were achieved, while 4.52b/s/Hz spectral efficiency was tested on the looped back scenario of over 13,200km.
Cisco also said the test simulated transpacific distances via loopback on one end of the cable.
“We demonstrated that 24.7Tbps could be used on MAREA with plenty of margin. We also tested in full loopback mode (Bilbao to Virginia and back to Bilbao) showing that 18.5Tbps could be deployed for double the distance, also with plenty of system margin,” said Bill Gartner, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Optical Systems and Optics, Cisco.
https://newsroom.cisco.com/press-release-content?type=webcontent&articleId=2020401
