An Ocean of Opportunity for Submarine SMART Cables
COVER ARTICLE By Rebecca Bosco
Studying the ocean is essential for understanding the Earth’s interconnected climate systems. It provides insights into natural courses of weather patterns, climate regulation, and resource management. Scientists can better predict weather impacts by understanding ocean dynamics. It also helps manage resources sustainably and address natural and human-made environmental challenges. Hidden beneath the waves, the world's oceans conceal a crucial component of the Internet's infrastructure. Submarine cable networks, unseen and largely unacknowledged, are a marvel of human ingenuity, transcending the greatest geographical obstacles to link individuals and devices over immense spans for instant communication. Yet, these underwater networks hold the potential to fulfill outsized roles beyond their primary function of facilitating communication and connection. According to industry analysts at TeleGeography, 600 active submarine cables are deployed worldwide, spanning a total distance of nearly 1.4 million kilometers. These cables, which carefully crisscross the ocean floor, can cover thousands of kilometers of ocean floor. Critical components of undersea fiber optic cable systems are the repeaters placed every 60-100 km along the cable to provide optical signal amplification. Integrating new environmental sensors, including seismic, pressure, temperature, and eventually other sensors, will enable a new trove of real-time data collection for environmental and infrastructure threat reduction, natural disaster mitigation, and cable system safety monitoring. After all, undersea networks can already transmit terabytes of data per second, facilitating the worldwide connectivity we rely on daily in our personal and professional lives.
How Scientific Monitoring and Reliable Telecommunications (SMART) Cables help save lives and inform global scientific research By Rebecca Bosco
Hidden far beneath the waves of the world's oceans lies a crucial component of the Internet's infrastructure: submarine cable networks. These massive cables are a marvel of human ingenuity that span the greatest geographical obstacles on our planet to link people and devices for instantaneous communication. Yet, these underwater networks may hold the potential to fulfill outsized roles beyond their primary function of transmitting terabytes of data per second.
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ICT TODAY
October/November/December 2024
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