Wise Raman™ for Wide Spectrum – Xtera Celebrates the 10th Anniversary of its Raman Technology in the Field

DALLAS, TEXAS, USA – (March 5, 2013) – Xtera Communications, Inc., a leading global provider of optical networking solutions, celebrates the 10th anniversary of the first commercial network deployment of its Wise RamanTM technology.

The development of Xtera’s Raman optical amplification technology started 15 years ago and the first commercial deployment occurred in 2004. The oldest optical network equipped by Xtera currently transports more than 120 wavelengths at 10G. Today, Wise Raman™ efficiently supports 100G and Beyond 100G optical networking in field conditions, offering both wide optical spectrum (up to 100 nm) and ultra-long reach (in excess of 4,500 km for terrestrial applications and 500 km for single span applications with 100G wavelengths). As recently demonstrated by field trials in the Verizon network, Wise Raman™ is a key technical enabler for 16QAM modulation format and is future-proofed for 64T backbone applications in field conditions with Xtera’s XWDM solution.

Unlike competitive offerings where integrating optical Raman amplifiers with EDFAs is an afterthought, Xtera designed its Nu-Wave Optima™ optical networking platform from the ground up to combine different optical amplification flavors, ranging from simple EDFA to all-distributed, wide-spectrum Raman amplification.

Relying on a comprehensive patent portfolio and a continuous R&D effort in the past 15 years, Wise Raman™ is not limited to high-performance amplifier subsystems but extends beyond just the device itself to encompass the performance and the operation of optical networks. Based on a unique R&D expertise, backed by an unrivalled 10 years of operational experience, built on field-proven photonic design, and supported by control and automation, Xtera’s Wise RamanTM technology offers both optical performance and operational excellence with a seamless integration of Raman amplification into optical networks. Intelligent control is present at the different levels of software (firmware, network element software and network management system) and makes Wise Raman™ robust toward imperfections in the fiber plant, extremely responsive to transient conditions, flexible with respect to the channel load and plan, simple to deploy and operate, and transparent in the network.

With Raman amplifiers deployed in more than 40 countries on a variety of fiber types and vintages in multiple environments, ranging from densely-populated areas in Europe to rainforest or desert environments, Wise Raman™ has turned out to be tolerant to non-ideal fiber plants, safe to operate and compatible with standard operational practices.

Xtera pioneered Raman optical amplification in backbone networks with the installation of Raman amplifiers with a 100 nm optical spectrum in 2004. Xtera was also the first supplier to introduce Soft-Decision Forward Error Correction (SD-FEC) in a 100G commercial network in 2011. In April 2013, Xtera launched the industry’s first optical repeater featuring Raman amplification for long-haul subsea cable systems. In December 2013, Xtera introduced XWDM solution that makes possible a [Capacity x Reach] metric which exceeds, by a factor of six, what is normally achievable by today’s 100G optical transport systems that use Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifiers (EDFAs).

As a leading industry innovator, Xtera has been bringing technical breakthroughs to the optical networking industry for the last decade.

About Xtera Communications, Inc.

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