Short: Understanding cables carry 95% of the world’s internet traffic, which recently increases the acts of sabotage against them. NATO and the European Union are searching for ways to detect ships or divers near these cables, and many companies are turning to acoustic sensation as a possible solution.
Since the invasion of Russia’s Ukraine in 2022, suspected attacks against the underace cable have increased, including several incidents in the Baltic Sea. The United Nations takes these acts of sabotage very seriously and formed an international organization to protect cables in December.
A German developer and manufacturer AP Sensing produced the distributed fiber-optic sensing (DFOS) technology that may alert authorities for adjacent attacks on the underground cable.
As mentioned by the BBC, when the fiber travels light pulses with optic strand, small reflections sometimes bounce back with that line. Reflections are affected by acoustic vibrations, as well as factors including temperature and physical disturbances for the cable. Changes in temperature with part of a buried cable may show that it had become unbalanced, for example.
“Acoustic energy that travels through fiber is basically harassing our signal. We can measure this unrest,” said the global sales manager Daniel Gervig at AP Sensing.
Using this technique, it is possible to determine the approximate size of the vessel passing over a sub -cub, as well as its location and, in some cases, this direction is traveling. It can also find out if a diver touches the cables, a langar falls nearby, and when it happens the location of damage.
The firm stated that surveillance capabilities can be added to existing fiber optic cables if an unused fiber is available or if there are sufficient free channels in liter fibers.
Systems have limitations. This can only detect vibration within a few hundred meters range instead of a few kilometers, and hearing stations (inquiries) need to be installed at about 100 kilometers (62 mi).
AP Sensing said that technology is currently stationed in the North Sea and it will soon start testing a monitoring cable installed somewhere on the floor of the Baltic Sea.
In August, NATO warned that Russia could target underest cables and GPS to disrupt significant communication and navigation systems. The organization later formed the heist (to ensure the hybrid space-Sabarine architecture to ensure the infosec of telecommunications), which aims to develop strategies to protect global internet traffic and create an alternative route in terms of global undersete cable network-an alternative route is spread for 1.2 million kilometers. Cables provide an estimated $ 10 trillion in daily financial transactions and carry encrypted defense communications.
