Microsoft and Facebook test 400G on trans-Atlantic cable

A field demonstration conducted by Acacia Communications, in collaboration with Microsoft and Facebook, achieved the first 400G single carrier DWDM transmission over the 6,600 km Marea submarine cable between Virginia Beach, Virginia and Bilbao, Spain. The transmission employed Acacia’s AC1200 coherent module, which is powered by its Pico digital signal processor. Utilizing Acacia’s patented Fractional QAM modulation, the field demonstration achieved 400G transmission using approximately 4 bits/symbol, with a baud rate of nearly 70Gbaud. Additionally, modulation formats greater than 4 bits/symbol were utilized to achieve a spectral efficiency of 6.41 b/s/Hz on the same 6,600 km cable.

The Marea submarine cable, a joint project between Microsoft, Facebook, and global telecommunications infrastructure company Telxius, features an “open” design that allows it to evolve with technology and enables adoption of new technologies, such as the Acacia AC1200 coherent module.

“Transmission of 400G over 6,600 km is a significant milestone and demonstrates what can be achieved with higher performance transmission optics combined with a well-designed line system,” said Mark Filer, Principle Optical Engineer, Azure Networking, Microsoft Corp. “This field demonstration of an advanced solution that is just becoming commercially available highlights the value of Marea’s open architecture to evolve with the latest technology. By allowing early adoption of new technologies such as Acacia’s AC1200, we are able to increase the utilization of our deployed fiber, maximize our investment and improve network capacity.”

“We are excited to have completed this field demonstration on the Marea cable, with the first transmission of 400G on a single carrier, highlighting the performance and features of our AC1200 coherent module,” said Christian Rasmussen, Founder and Vice President of Digital Signal Processing and Optics at Acacia Communications, “We believe the benefits of our AC1200 module will help network operators improve their network utilization in a range of applications from edge DCI to submarine.”

MAREA redefines the transAtlantic subsea bandwidth equation

Construction of the highest-capacity subsea cable to cross the Atlantic is now complete.

The 6,600 km MAREA subsea cable, which was jointly funded by Microsoft and Facebook, links Virginia Beach, Virginia to Bilbao, Spain. The cable will be managed by Telxius, Telefónica’s new infrastructure company. The cable features eight fiber pairs and an initial estimated design capacity of 160 Tbps.

The cable takes a more southern route than other transatlantic cables, which mostly connect northern Europe to the New York/New Jersey region.

ECOC 2018: Acacia presents 600G Coherent Transmission

At the European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC) in Rome, Acacia Communications demonstrated its AC1200 coherent module with dual-core design enabling 1.2 Tbps error-free transmission over fiber with 600 Gbps per wavelength.

The Acacia AC1200 module supports transmission capacity of up to 1.2 Tbps in a footprint that is 40 percent less than the size of the 5” x 7” modules that support transmission speeds of 400 Gbps today.

The module is based on Acacia’s Pico DSP ASIC, which utilizes two wavelengths that can be configured to support from 100 Gbps to 600 Gbps capacity each. The Acacia AC1200 supports a suite of advanced three-dimensional (3D) shaping features that may be optimized to enable performance approaching theoretical limits on a wide range of network configurations.

Acacia shipped its first AC1200 module customer samples in March 2018 and anticipates production to begin by the end of 2018.