New technologies for optical submarine systems

摘要

Two different technologies are presently under consideration for a new generation of optical submarine systems: the regeneration, direct extrapolation of the present technology, which could be used for system installation as early as the end of 1994, and direct optical amplification, a totally new technology, which may appear as the technology of the future. The generations of optical submarine systems follow one another very quickly: 280 Mb/s across the Atlantic in 1988, 560 Mb/s in 1991, and probably 2.5 Gb/s by 1995. The author describes the technology of the 560 Mb/s system using regeneration, which is presently under development. The technologies of regeneration and direct optical amplification which could be developed for the future 2.5 Gb/s system are considered, and the difficulties of both development programs are discussed.