DESIGN AND PERFORMANCE OF THE FSA SUBMARINE OPTICAL AMPLIFIER SYSTEM

The FSA submarine optical amplifier system (submarine fiber using opti cal amplifiers) has been developed. It can transmit signals up to 10 G bit/s with a repeater spacing of 100 km. The submarine repeaters conta in optical amplifiers for six line pairs to yield a maximum capacity o f 60 Gbit/s. This paper describes its system configuration, the repeat er configuration, and the fiber dispersion management scheme used to r ealize bit-rate flexible transmission and in-service monitoring. In lo ng-haul optical: amplifier systems, since the amplified spontaneous em ission noise from the optical amplifier is the main impairment limitin g the transmission distance, an SNR design technique that takes this n oise into account is developed. Finally, the results obtained after th e commercial installation of this system in the Kagoshima-Okinawa rout e (total length 905 km) are reported, including chromatic dispersion c haracteristics and SNR values at both 2.5 Gbit/s and 10 C bit/s transm ission. The effectiveness of the system design is verified through the demonstration of good transmission performance and the feasibility of in-service monitoring.