Alcatel-Lucent 1620 SOFTNODE for submarine networks offers high density, small footprint

May 11, 2015

Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks, the submarine cables subsidiary of Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU), has introduced the 1620 SOFTNODE submarine line termination equipment (SLTE) platform. The system is designed to flexibly support transmission of 240 Tbps on multiple fiber pairs in a footprint smaller than current SLTE.

Each transmission line card in the system supports a variety of optical transmission rates -- 100, 200, 300 and 400 Gbps, Alcatel-Lucent says. Meanwhile, the platform is as much as 10X smaller than competing SLTE and offers power reduction of a factor of 2 or three, the company asserts.

Other features and benefits Alcatel-Lucent cites include:

Support of transmission distances up to 14,000 km for multi-point of presence (multi-PoP) to multi-PoP network requirements via multi-degree nodes.
Stepless tuning of optical transmission for both wet and dry plant via 48 software-configurable submarine modulation formats.
A gridless architecture that enables tuning of any wavelength to 33 GHz with no fixed granularity.
Engineered to support future application of 400 Gigabit Ethernet and software-defined networking (SDN) technologies.
Transport of any Optical Transport Network (OTN) and GMPLS connection.
Optimization of terrestrial backhaul networks by the reduction of the required number of fiber pairs to extend trans-oceanic capacity to inland PoPs and data centers.

Alcatel-Lucent says that GoTo Networks has chosen the 1620 SOFTNODE platform for the Australia West Express system, which will link Australia, the Middle East, and Africa. The system also completed a field trial over the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) system that demonstrated transmission of 12.6 Tbps per fiber pair.

For more information on high-speed transmission systems and suppliers, visit the Lightwave Buyer's Guide.