The development of the Internet and the 5G related applications dramatically increase the bandwidth demand. Technically, the transmission capacity of a single-mode fibre is closing to the Shannon limit, and the optimization on the transmission technology cannot achieve a remarkable increase in system transmission capacity. "Space Division Multiplexing" technology has attracted the attention of the industry as it provides a way to increase the capacity significantly. It contains several methods such as high fibre count (HFC) technology, multi-core fibre (MCF) technology, and multi-mode fibre (MMF) transmission. Among them, the high fibre count technology has been applied in projects due to its relatively mature technique and capacity improvement effects.

At the beginning of 2018, HMN Tech has started the research on the overall solution of the high fibre count submarine cable system. The bottleneck of the high fibre count submarine cable system is the submersible products development. HMN Tech improved the product design and successfully launched the high fibre count end to end solution in 2019, which upgrades Repeater, Submarine Cable, Branching Unit, Reconfigurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexer, Power Feeding Equipment, Submarine Line Management and related accessories.

As the core of the solution, HMN Tech high fibre count submarine repeater broke through the fibre count limitation of existing products in the industry. Supporting up to 16 fibre pairs, high fibre count repeater can double the capacity. Furthermore, it provides industry-leading 39.5nm ultra-wide bandwidth, which covers C-band and extended C-band, to maximize the capacity of one fibre pair. By increasing the number of fibre pairs and providing wider bandwidth in the system, the submarine cable system can provide even larger bandwidth resources. Single bit cost can be reduced, which brings customers tremendous commercial value.

High fibre count solution challenges the power supply for long-distance systems. HMN Tech PFE takes the lead in pushing the submarine cable industry’s power supply limit, by increasing the output voltage to 18kV. It is able to achieve single end power supply for 16 fibre pairs system up to 12,000km distance. For more details on the high fibre count products, please refer to HMN Tech Latest Product.

As the world's first 16 fibre pair repeatered submarine cable system, Hainan to Hong Kong Express (H2HE) system will be ready for service at the beginning of 2021. The delivery of this system is of great significance to the submarine cable industry. The design capacity of H2HE system is 19.2Tbit/s per fiber pair, and system capacity achieves over 300Tbit/s by adopting HMN Tech’s high fibre count solution, which is far beyond the traditional solution. H2HE system fully meets the current demands, and reserves sufficient bandwidth for long-term development for the region.