OFS Introduces TeraWave SCUBA 125 Optical Fiber

OFS today introduced the TeraWave SCUBA 125 Optical Fiber, optimally designed to deliver excellent performance for coherent transport submarine systems.  The effective area is matched to terrestrial G.654.E fibers for excellent performance from the ocean landing site to terrestrial networks, and this fiber offers excellent cabling performance in the C- and L-bands and world-class attenuation.

The effective area of 125 square-microns reduces nonlinearities, enabling the launch of higher signal power compared to G.652 and most G.654B fibers, while the ultra-low attenuation of  <0.158 dB/km (average) reduces signal loss.

The ultra-low attenuation enabled by a pure silica core and large effective area features of the TeraWave SCUBA 125 fiber deliver improved margin beyond that needed for transmitting 100 Gb/s over trans-Atlantic distances, across the C- and L-bands. The additional margin can be used to support denser signal constellations than can be achieved with G.652 fibers for increased spectral efficiency.

“The low noise and low non-linearity provided by TeraWave SCUBA 125 fiber could be used to engineer a trans-Atlantic link with 8-QAM modulation, or alternatively a lower cost QPSK modulation system with fewer repeaters,” said Dr. Robert Lingle Jr., Director of Systems & Technology Strategy at OFS. “Then you could extend the SCUBA 125 fiber in standard terrestrial cable all the way into the inland data center.”

The TeraSCUBA 125 fiber is manufactured using OFS’ proprietary manufacturing process, which produces a fiber with ultra-low polarization mode dispersion (PMD) and is fully compliant with the ITU G.654.B, D and E standard for cutoff-shifted fiber.