Pacnet and Infinera demo 500G optical superchannels in Asia/PacketLight Networks enhances video support

Pacnet and Infinera Corp. (NASDAQ: INFN) have completed a joint demonstration in which they transmitted more than 3 Tbps of optical capacity over 4,500 km of Pacnet’s C2C undersea network using Infinera’s photonic integrated circuits (PICs) and FlexCoherent superchannels.

Infinera is one of the first vendors to implement superchannels, and claims to be the first to demonstrate superchannels based on 500-Gbps photonic integrated circuits (PICs). A superchannel is a large unit of optical capacity created by combining multiple optical carriers into a single managed entity, so that optical networks can scale capacity without scaling operational cost and complexity (see “Superchannels to the rescue”). Superchannels based on PICs enable operators to simply provision 500 Gbps of capacity with a single operational maneuver.

The demonstration highlights the application of Infinera’s 500G superchannel technology to ultra-long-haul subsea communications. It also demonstrated the ability to use FlexCoherent technology to software select the modulation format to optimize fiber capacity and reach.

The test was conducted with Infinera’s DTN-X platform, which has begun shipping this quarter (see “Infinera debuts DTN-X packet-optical transport platform with 500G PIC, OTN/MPLS support”).

Pacnet owns and operates a major pan-Asian submarine cable network extending from India to the US and touching 21 cable landing stations. At the heart of this network is EAC-C2C, which spans 36,800 km.

“We are impressed with Infinera’s DTN-X platform delivering 500-Gbps FlexCoherent superchannels and integrated OTN switching without compromise,” said Bill Barney, Pacnet’s CEO. “This successful test with Infinera demonstrates that Pacnet’s network can scale up with the industry’s latest high-speed optical technologies to deliver faster services to our customers.”

PacketLight says it has enhanced support for video interfaces in both of its Optical Transport Network (OTN) and transponder-based offerings. The new feature is designed to enable efficient and simple streaming of high-capacity video for broadcast media companies and digital studios over fiber and standards-based OTN networks.

Different copper interfaces for video such as SD-SDI, HD-SDI, 3G-SDI and DVB-ASI are all supported by PacketLight’s CWDM/DWDM and OTN product family. Additionally, video signals can be mixed with other data and storage traffic such as 1G/10G Ethernet and 1/2/4/8/10G Fibre Channel.

Use of the PacketLight platforms reduces the number of fibers needed for video and data transport between sites, thus reducing the infrastructure costs as well as enabling carriers to add video services on top of their existing OTN metro or long-distance backbone infrastructure.

PacketLight says its modular approach offers optical-to-electrical and electrical-to-optical conversion in a small footprint, without the need of bulky converters. The platforms also offer SNMP-based monitoring and control management software for the conversion process. The systems can map up to 16 multirate bidirectional video services such as DVB-ASI, SD-SDI, or HD-SDI into aggregated 10G or 20G OTU2 within its 1U carrier grade PL-2000 product, for example.

In addition, PacketLight’s product line also supports SFP-based pluggable client video interface modules for the commonly used DVB/SDI signals of up to 2.97-Gbps with embedded re-clockers, cable drivers, equalizers, and monitoring capabilities.