Design Requirements for the Current Generation of Undersea Cable Systems

This article describes the design requirements of AT&T's third generation of optical submarine cable systems. Technology advances that have been incorporated in the design include erbium‐doped fiber amplifiers, lithium niobate modulators, low‐loss and low‐polarization mode dispersion‐shifted fiber, synchronous digital hierarchy terminals, and forward error correction. This paper discusses: Optical submarine cable systems, Customer requirements, New technologies used in system design, System building blocks, System performance, and System and component design rules to meet customer requirements.