Infinera offers SLTE based on Infinite Capacity Engine

Infinera has found a new home for its Infinite Capacity Engine, this time in submarine line terminal equipment (SLTE). The offering includes the XTS-3300 and XTS-3600 meshponders for submarine network applications as well as a 1.2-Tbps line card for the DTN-X XTC Series that supports 12 Tbps of non-blocking Optical Transport Network (OTN) switching.

The company also described software tools that will help enable the new capabilities.

The 1RU XTS-3300 and 4RU XTS-3600 meshponders are similar to the XT-3300 and XT-3600 platforms Infinera introduced last November in that they combine muxponder functions with "sliceable photonics," which is the ability to split a platform interface's 500 Gbps across multiple subtending connections. Beyond the fact that the "S" stands for "submarine," Infinera has optimized the XTS platforms for undersea network applications through the ability to support such subsea-centric modulation formats as matrix-enhanced phase-shift keying (ME-PSK) and 3QAM as well as other enhancements that enable submarine network reaches via wet-plant WDM systems.

For example, Abhijit Chitambar, principal product marketing manager at Infinera, estimates the system can support reaches beyond transpacific lengths, depending upon the modulation format used. The systems offer 16QAM, 8QAM, and QPSK for the most common applications. Chitambar predicted that the ME-PSK and 3QAM formats would be employed over "problem links" that required special attention.

The XTS-3300 supports 1.2 Tbps on the line side and twelve 100G interfaces on the client side. The larger XTS-3600 accommodates 2.4 Tbps of line-side capacity and a mix of a maximum twenty-four 100G OTN/Ethernet interfaces or a maximum forty 10 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces. Both platforms offer Layer 1 encryption and the company's Instant Bandwidth capabilities. They also will interoperate with Infinera's DTN-X XTC and XT Series platforms for integration of terrestrial and undersea cable network infrastructures.

Meanwhile, the company also has announced subsea-optimized 1.2-Tbps line modules for the DTN-X XTC-4 and XTC-10 platforms. The modules include a 1.2-Tbps line-side module as well as a client-side module with similar capacity. The latter comes in a double-wide format to support 400 Gigabit Ethernet as well as a single-wide format for a variety of interface combinations, including 2x100G, 20x10 Gigabit Ethernet, and 18x10G. The upgrade more than doubles the platforms' switching and transmission capacity to enable up to 12 Tbps of non-blocking OTN switching with ODU0-level switching granularity via non-disruptive in-service upgrades.

Finally, Infinera has paired the new capabilities with its Xceed software suite to enable multi-layer software-defined networking (SDN) capabilities as well as its Digital Network Administrator (DNA).

Infinera trialed the Advanced Coherent Toolkit, a key piece of the Infinite Capacity Engine, on an undersea network with Telstra (see "Infinera trials terabit Advanced Coherent Toolkit with Telstra"). However, the first submarine network operator endorsement for the new SLTE offering came from another source.

"Subsea networks are key enablers for broadband penetration across the world," said Larry Schwartz, CEO at Seaborn Networks, via an Infinera press release. "Our flexible business model enables customers to rapidly expand wholesale capacity on submarine cable networks. The new Infinera XTS-3300 and XTS-3600 meshponder solutions and dynamic spectral sharing are ideal for subsea networks to ensure scalability, flexibility, programmability, and rapid activation of bandwidth."

The XTS-3300 platform will arrive on the market first at some point in the second quarter of this year. The XTS-3600 and the 1.2 Tb/s subsea line module for the XTC-4 and XTC-10 platforms will follow "shortly afterwards," Chitambar said.

The new products put Infinera in position to ride the wave of new submarine network deployments expected over the next several years (see, for example, "Why the submarine network market is so hot"). The process of enabling the upgrades was cited last year as a hindrance to participating in the deployment cycle earlier (see "Infinera stock drops 33% on soft 3Q16 guidance").

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