Infinera Corp of Sunnyvale, CA, USA, a vertically integrated manufacturer of digital optical network systems incorporating its own indium phosphide-based photonic integrated circuits (PICs), says that customers have deployed more than 1 petabit per second of super-channel transmission capacity in live networks globally.
In 2012 Infinera claimed to be first to ship 500Gb/s long-haul super-channels commercially and now, nearly two years later, remains the only firm delivering volume shipments of super-channels into production networks.
The Infinera Intelligent Transport Network features the DTN-X packet-optical transport networking platform, delivering 500Gb/s super-channels based on what are claimed to be the only commercially deployed large-scale photonic integrated circuits (PICs). In 2013, Infinera announced the second generation of super-channels, enhanced with soft-decision forward-error correction (SD-FEC) to increase transmission range, and recently Infinera announced its third-generation super-channel line-cards, which support flexible grid operation based on the new ITU-T G.694.1 frequency grid.
The optical performance of the super-channels offers service providers long-haul transmission technology that delivers scalable, cost-effective capacity without compromising optical reach, says the firm. The super-channels deliver long-haul reach of up to 4500km using polarization multiplexed (PM) QPSK modulation that supports up to 9.5Tb/s on a single pair of fibers. For ultra-long-haul and submarine reach, Infinera’s FlexCoherent modulation capability allows the line-card to be switched into PM-BPSK mode, where spans of over 9500km are deployed in production today. The operational scalability of super-channels was demonstrated last year when a team from Infinera and DANTE (operator of the GÉANT pan-European Research and Education network backbone) achieved an official Guinness World Record for the fastest provisioning of 8Tb/s of capacity on production route between Hamburg and Amsterdam based on Infinera super-channels.
“Our customers have now deployed more than a petabit per second of Infinera's super-channels in production, demonstrating that our PIC-based, single-card 500Gb/s super-channel solution is preferred by service providers globally to scale their networks while minimizing operations costs,” says president Dr David Welch.
Infinera says that it continues to enhance its super-channel technology with new solutions simplifying operations via multi-layer automation of Intelligent Transport Networks (announced in early March). Infinera also announced enhancements that include the first super-channel CDC FlexROADM (colorless, directionless and contentionless reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer) and the first unified Layer 1 and Layer 0 control plane, including support for the emerging IETF standard for spectrum switched optical networks (SSON) extensions to generalized MPLS.
“From its introduction of the DTN-X, Infinera recognized the opportunity to offer an economically disruptive product just as the mass market for 100G transport took off,” comments Rick Talbot, principal analyst, Optical Infrastructure at market research firm Current Analysis. “The milestone achievement not only validates the vendor’s plans to play a leading role in that market, with sales to operators of all sizes, including Tier 1s, but it also confirms the market’s appetite for long-haul super-channels, whose economics depended on the implementation of the 500G photonic integrated circuit,” he adds.
