Recent advances in submarine optical communication systems

✍ Scribed by Massimiliano Salsi; Gabriel Charlet; Jérémie Renaudier; Oriol Bertran-Pardo; Haïk Mardoyan; Sébastien Bigo; Philippe Plantady; Alain Calsat

• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 215 KB
• Volume: 14
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1089-7089
• DOI: 10.1002/bltj.20408

✦ Synopsis

We report on new solutions for the evolution of submarine optical transmission systems from 10 Gb/s to 40 Gb/s per channel. Today, optical coherent detection paired with digital signal processing (DSP) offers the opportunity to exploit innovative techniques like polarization division multiplexing (PDM). To take full benefit of this disruptive technology we propose the PDM-BPSK modulation format that has 0.8 bit/s/Hz spectral efficiency. This solution presents unparalleled robustness to linear distortions, thanks to DSP, and high tolerance to nonlinear propagation effects. An experimental demonstration on Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Network's 6,300 km straight-line submarine link illustrates the performance of this new solution and demonstrates its potential to increase total capacity of submarine systems.