Next Generation Submarine Network – Innovative

Repeater Technology
Submarine cable is highway for data transmission. Submarine networks carry more than 95 percent
of the world’s intercontinental electronic communications traffic. Submarine cables are critical
infrastructure, which carries more than $10 trillion worth transactions, every day.

Submarine networking has recently seen several technological evolution. Recently, many new
subsea announcements with make use of innovative technologies in Dry plant and Wet Plant. One
of the latest advancements in wet plant side repeater known as Repeater Pump Farming. 

Submarine Fiber has attenuation. Nominal loss of Fiber 0.155dB/km at 1550nm (TeraWave® SCUBA
Ocean Optical Fiber). In practical scenario, it can vary and may be up to 0.25dB/km or more due
various factors.

 Repeaters are used for optical signal amplification. Repeaters are placed every 60km to
70km.
 Power to the repeater is feeded from Power feeding equipment, which is located in
Submarine Cable Station.
 In traditional subsea cable, every Fiber pair will have their own repeaters. Four Fiber pairs
will have repeater housing four amplifier chassis. One Amplifier chassis has Dual laser 980nm
Pump Units. This is called 2x2 Pump redundancy. These types of redundancy scheme used in
the past.
 EDFA - 980-nm technology repeaters–dual pump with high-loss loopback (HLLB) monitoring
used in the past.

In traditional Subsea cable, Single pump failure of EDFA (Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifiers) putting
entire Fiber pair under great risk. If dual, pump fails, resulting in entire repeater failure, which
heavily affects live traffic in particular Fiber pair of the entire segment.

2x2 Pump redundancy

Scheme is a general design shown in above figure, which is used in past.

Here one amplifier pair i.e. two EDFAs (Transmit and receive direction), shares power from two pump lasers.
This is high risk. If single pump fails, it is risk. If both pump fails, then entire repeater failure resulting in traffic
impact.
 4×2 redundancy
Currently, this scheme is being used.  This improves the reliability by having additional 2 pump lasers
compared to 2x2 pump redundancy as shown in above figure.

Two EDFAs share the power from four pump lasers, which tolerates three-pump lasers failure at most in each
Fiber pair. This design doubles the total cost of pump lasers. 

Above-mentioned redundancy schemes are standard. Pump powers dedicated to 1 Fiber pair. The pumps
cannot be shared to other Fiber pair.

 Repeater Pump farming

This is the latest advancement in repeater technology. All new Subsea cables will use this type of technology,
which provides maximum redundancy and flexibility.

A series of pump lasers and EDFAs are cross connected via two-stage optical Fiber couplers. This is highly
complex design.

Pool of pumps cross connected to pool of FPs.

Repeater Pump Farming Example

Above example shows, 2 Fiber pairs with 4 pumps in pump farming scheme. Likewise, we can have different
options mentioned below:

 4 Pumps / 2 Fiber Pairs

  4 Pumps / 4 Fiber Pairs
 8 Pumps / 4 Fiber Pairs
 8 Pumps / 8 Fiber Pairs
 16 Pumps / 8 Fiber Pairs
 16 Pumps / 16 Fiber Pairs

Above options of pump sharing is not fixed. It can be different based on requirements, calculations and
design.

Higher the number of pumps, higher the drop voltage of repeaters. In practical scenario, example below:

3000km Submarine Cable: More Fiber pairs / More Pumps

 Higher number of pumps and higher voltage drop of repeaters. Total cable length is small, number
of repeaters are less in the cable, and more pumps can be used.

 6000km Submarine Cable: More Fiber pairs/ Less Pumps

Total cable length is large, number of repeaters are more in the cable segment, and less pumps can
be used

 Conclusion

Submarine repeaters are the heart of Submarine cable system. Submarine technology Innovation is
continuous process. Do we have new amplifier types, modified EDFA's which can play a role in
future submarine systems. To achieve maximum redundancy, flexibility and increase cable
capacity Repeater Pump Farming is mandatory.