State-of-the-Art and Future of Submarine Cable System Technology

Abstract

The FASTER cable system has been developed as the first trans-pacific optical submarine cable system designed for digital-coherent transmission at the initial state. With this significant change for submarine cables, the design capacity is continuously being upgraded following the improvement of the stateof-the-art modulation format to maximize spectral efficiency even at the limited optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR). For the next generation, the novel technologies are expected to increase the capacity per cable under the conditions of limited feeding power and space in a cable. This report reviews some technologies from the current to the promising future submarine cable systems such as the introduction of space-division-multiplexing (SDM) technologies.