Infinera and SEACOM announced the successful trial completion of five 100 Gigabit per second (100Gb/s) coherent optical signals transmitted over 1732 kilometers in Africa.
Believed to be a first of its kind in Africa, the 500Gb/s trial ran over and was looped back across SEACOM’s newly built 930-km Dark Fibre Africa (DFA) fiber route which links the SEACOM Mtunzini cable landing station in KwaZulu Natal to the Teraco data center in Johannesburg.
The live demonstration was witnessed by members of Africa’s scientific, research and development community at Teraco’s data center in Johannesburg.
The trial used Infinera’s 500Gb/s Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs), each which integrates five 100Gb/s coherent channels onto a single chip. The PICs were used for both transmitting and receiving the five 100Gb/s signals during the trial, the first time the PICs have been used to transmit and provide real time coherent processing for all 500Gb/s simultaneously on a production network. The trial also demonstrated Infinera’s FlexCoherent functionality by switching between QPSK and BPSK modulation.
Infinera plans to deliver the 500Gb/s PICs as part of a system which integrates 5 Terabit per second (Tb/s) OTN switching and 100Gb/s coherent optical transmission in early 2012.