Cisco and Microsoft have completed a subsea transmission trial where they transmitted data at a rate of 800 Gbps from Boston to Bordeaux, France on the Amitié transatlantic communications cable. The companies called the effort “a milestone of increased speed, efficiency and distance for a subsea transmission”.
The Amitié transatlantic submarine cable, which connects the U.S., U.K., and France, features Space Division Multiplexing (SDM) technology with 16 fiber pairs, more than traditional subsea cables, with repeater power shared across the fiber pairs to deliver the highest cable capacity.
“The transmission of 800G across 3,873 miles is a milestone that demonstrates SDM cables can deliver increased capacity over traditional subsea cables,” said Jamie Gaudette, GM of Cloud Network Engineering, Microsoft. “This field trial demonstrates what is now a commercial technology for subsea routes, and we can improve the network capacity to help drive digital transformation for people, organizations, and industries around the world.”
The real-time field trial used Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing 800G in a 150 GHz channel spacing, equivalent to a spectrum efficiency of 5.33bit/s/Hz (bits per second per hertz) and a maximum spectral efficiency of 5.6bit/s/Hz.
Reader Interactions