WDM optical submarine network systems

This paper describes optical submarine network systems that support 160 Gb/s capacity (10 Gb/s x 16 lambda) per fiber. These advanced systems enable practical and cost-effective deployment of networks with 4 fiber pair optical submarine cables, and total capacity of 640 Gb/s. A typical network configuration and the relevant equipment for such networks are outlined. The equipment includes submersible wide-band repeaters, optical ADM branching units and line terminal equipment, which we have developed making full use of our advanced optical technology. Our ultra-large capacity (10.7 Gb/s x 66 lambda) transmission experiment, and enabling technologies for future Tera-bit transmission systems are also summarized. New network configurations using OADM or Internet Protocol (IP) routers are proposed for next generation WDM submarine networks.