Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks (ASN) and Nokia Bell Labs announced that they achieved record transmission speeds of 65 Tbps over a 6,600 km single mode fibre in a lab trial using submarine grade dual band erbium doped fibre amplifiers. The trial used Bell Labs' Probabilistic Constellation Shaping (PCS) technology, a new modulation technique that maximises the distance and capacity of high-speed transmission in optical networks. Unlike traditional techniques whereby all constellation symbols are transmitted with the same occurrence, PCS intelligently uses non-uniform transmission of constellation symbols by reducing the occurrence of high power symbols, thus providing more resilience to noise and other impairments, and the ability to dynamically adapt to changing conditions.
The partners said this novel approach will help extend the capability of transoceanic cable systems to meet increasing data traffic demand. In fact, the capacity of 65 Tbps – equivalent to more than 10 million HDTV channels streamed simultaneously – is 13,000 times the capacity that was available on the first undersea amplified transatlantic system installed in 1995.
