Ocean Networks Canada
NEPTUNE Canada
FEATURE SUBMARINE CABLES
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few million dollars. In the meantime, we’ll be scoping out how we do this. We’ll have a letter going out to industry and another to research observatories saying “Which of you might be interested?”’ Even before such a demonstration, two
A rattail fish glides past as ROPOS (Remotely Operated Platform for Ocean Sciences) joins two connectors at the seafloor at a depth of 2659m
Making a case Companies such as Huawei Marine Networks (HMN), headquartered in Tianjin, China, are now financially supporting three reports into green cable viability being done under the ITU’s auspices. ‘We’re one of the sponsors for the ITU working group looking at standardising sensor designs,’ revealed Mike Constable, HMN’s chief executive officer. ‘It’s an ideal forum for looking at how we’re going to integrate these systems into all the various suppliers’ repeaters or cables. Is it HMN’s repeaters, or submerged plant, or the other players, like Alcatel-Lucent or TE SubCom? Everyone’s looking for a design that doesn’t interfere with the communications payload and provides the functionality that the end users want. We’d buy sensors as a package when we’re required to by a system purchaser and then incorporate them into our design. What kind of sensors, how they work, the performance criteria, and the demands on those sensors; that’s what the ITU would help to standardise.’ Yet obstacles still remain to deployment of
dual sensing/telecom networks, even though they’re now a serious consideration for submarine cable system suppliers. ‘Tey’re pretty confident that they can build it without impacting their customers,’ Phibbs emphasised. ‘But they’re all now at the stage where they say, “If you really want to do this, you need to find someone with some money who’s either prepared to build a demonstration system or an actual functional system that has these things on them”. Tat’s probably the bigger challenge; dealing with owners – the telecom companies – trying to work with them on why they would do it. It’s harder to justify to them. Tey simply see problems.’
20 FIBRE SYSTEMS Issue 6 • Winter 2015 One potential issue arises in how such cables
might be treated by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). ‘UNCLOS has very specific protection for telecommunication cables but not for science observations,’ Phibbs said. ‘Tere are concerns that by putting science instruments on you might remove your protection as a cable under UNCLOS. For the big things like trans-Pacific systems, it’s not that big an issue because you’ve only got two ends landing, and if you pick your countries right they may be enthusiastic about having science systems on there because it gives data from their coast. But if you’re going between island groups, criss-crossing exclusion zones, it could be a big issue.’ Barnes hopes that the ITU’s recently-
completed reports will help push through such concerns. ‘We have done a study on functional requirements, another on the wet demonstrator and another on the market and business case,’ he said. ‘Tey will be the basis for gaining support for a wet demonstrator, which is going to cost a
companies have already offered submarine telecom cables with the possibility of adding sensors, Barnes added. ‘One is the SubPartners APX-East line that goes from Sydney to California. Te other is Arctic Fibre, which is proposing a cable system to directly connect Tokyo and London without going through intermediary locations for the first time. Tis would go through the Bering Strait, around northern Alaska and the Canadian Arctic. Here’s an opportunity to have environmental sensors deployed through an area that’s going to experience the most dramatic change in the next few decades of anywhere in the world, the Arctic Ocean.’
Who pays? Arctic Fibre put the cost of specific subsea branching units and power tails at $1.4-2.0 million per sensor location. Te sensors would also get at least one 10G wavelength, costing $1.4 million up front plus an ongoing lease. While this is a small proportion of the overall $620 million cost of the Arctic Fibre project, it wasn’t right for scientists. Consequently, the chance to integrate sensors into the main Arctic Fibre telecom cable has already been lost. Te ‘window of opportunity’ closed in January 2014 due to manufacturing and engineering lead times, explained Doug Cunningham, the company’s chief executive officer. ‘Sensors would not represent a major revenue
source to Arctic Fibre,’ Cunningham said. ‘We received no specific requests within the 2012-14 timeframe and accordingly are no longer able to provide sensor capability directly on our
The NEPTUNE Canada cabled ocean observatory relies on an 800km fibre-optic cable network to connect its sensors
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