Towards Transoceanic Repeaterless Optical Links

Basilio Catania

doi:10.1117/12.952930

30 January 1990 Towards Transoceanic Repeaterless Optical Links

Basilio Catania

Proceedings Volume 1085, Optical Fibres and Their Applications V; (1990) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.952930
Event: Optical Fibers and Their Applications V, 1989, Warsaw, Poland

Abstract

Present silica fibres have achieved improvements of the repeater spacing x capacity product over traditional transmission systems of a few orders of magnitudes, allowing repeater spacings up to few hundreds Kilometers and capacities up to a few Gigabit/sec. In particular transoceanic optical cables such as TAT-8 and TAT-9 are expected to cover the 6657 Km distance between U.S.A. and Europe with only about 100 repeaters. Still using silica fibres, a orastic improvement of capacity per fibre can be achieved in the future with multichannel coherent systems; moreover, repeaters' reliability and cost could be greatly improved by the use of optical amplifiers, possibly utilizing active fibres. However, the total number of repeaters to cross the ocean may be only marginally reduced. Hopes in drastically reducing the total number of repeaters rest on the development of suitable fluoride glasses and relevant sources and detectors operating at approximately 2.4 μm (the "fourth window", following the 0.85 μm, 1.3 μm and 1.55 μm windows) or, perhaps, at the "fifth window" of approx. 3.5 μm. Another very interesting development to achieve about limitless bandwidth is that of soliton transmission, which could be applied to both silica and fluoride fibres, now in its first experimentation stage. The paper gives a survey of the progress made to date and of the foreseeable future achievements.

Citation Download Citation

Basilio Catania "Towards Transoceanic Repeaterless Optical Links", Proc. SPIE 1085, Optical Fibres and Their Applications V, (30 January 1990); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.952930

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