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May 12
2008
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Further to our blog entry about Submarine Repeaters, here is some history of the technology used.
The first generation optical fibre cable systems, repeaters or 'regenerators', were placed along the cable periodically to boost the optical signal. Each regenerator was comprised of a receiver, to convert the optical signal to a digital electrical signal; a regenerator to work out whether each incoming pulse was a ‘1' or a ‘0' and to generate a new one; and a transmitter (laser) to convert the new digital pulse into an optical one for transmission over the next fibre section.
Although robust and reliable, the key disadvantage of this technology was capacity:
- The regenerator circuits installed along the cable were preset to operate at one transmission rate (‘bit-rate') and could not be changed later, and
- The regenerators were only able to process or ‘regenerate' one set of data (wavelength) at a time making them incompatible for use with WDM.


