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Satnews Daily
June 7th, 2017

No More Helicopter Island Hopping ... ViaLite's DWDM Fiber Links Connect Remote Pacific Islands


Not everything is always perfect in paradise, like when a US government organization needed RF over fiber links to connect remote antennas located on islands in the Pacific Ocean it turned to ViaLite to deliver the high bandwidth required. Prior to the new links, the operators had to hire a helicopter to travel between islands when they needed to swap antennas. However, with the multiple signals provided by the ViaLiteHD system this is no longer necessary as all the signals from all the antennas are available the whole time.

Using state-of-the-art Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM), ViaLite was able to provide the challenging number of channels required over the long fiber lengths necessitated by the remoteness of the islands.

One of the two links to the command center is 96 km long and carries 10 signals in one direction and two in the other, while another 40 km link carries four signals in one direction and two in the other, all sent over a single fiber pair.

ViaLite Product Manager Gary Wade commented that their expertise in DWDM enabled them to provide the number of channels requested while meeting the demanding specification for very low noise.

The technology of optical multiplexing combines multiple optical signals over a single fiber at different wavelengths. The use of a high density of multiplexed signals in DWDM allows up to 96 channels per fiber, dramatically reducing the number of fibers required.