Long haul and high capacity WDM undersea cable technologies

Transmission capacity for optical undersea cable systems is growing rapidly. The capacity in TPC3, the first optical fiber cable in Pacific Ocean installed in 1989, was 280Mbit/s per fiber pair. The emergence of Erbium doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) paved the way for drastic increase in capacity for undersea optical cables, and large capacity optical amplifier undersea cable systems with 5Gbit/s per fiber pair, such as TPC-SCN and APCN, were constructed in Asia-Pacific region in 1995-1996. Recent 10Gbit/s-based WDM (Wavelength Division Multiplexing) technologies together with new fiber and new amplifier technologies enable us to further increase in capacity up to 160Gbit/s. In this paper, the key technologies for next generation undersea cable systems with 160Gbit/s capacity are reviewed and future prospect towards Tera-bit/s systems is discussed.