Subsea fibre cables can ‘listen out’ for sabotage

The divers found the fiber optic cable lying on the seabed in the North Sea. He floated closer, until it was not enough to touch.

He reached his hand out. But someone can tell that he was there. Someone was watching

“He stops and simply touches the cable,” says Daniel Gervig, a global sales manager at the German technology company AP Sensing, you clearly see the signal. ” “Acoustic energy that travels through fiber is basically harassing our signal. We can measure this disturbance.”

Many reports Damaged telecom cables have raised an alarm in recent months in the Baltic Sea.

It is so important that these are cables, which carry vast versions of internet data between countries, that NATO has launched a mission Is called “Baltic Orange”To patrol the Baltic Sea with aircraft, warships and drones.

There is also European Union Remedy For monitoring and safety of cables.

Despite those efforts, the authorities cannot be everywhere together.

Therefore, some companies are trying to monitor what is going on in the area around any cable – using fiber optic signals, listening to underwater drones, or pulling their anchors with seabed to hostile vessels.

This was during the tests of the AP sensing system last year – not a real effort on sabotage – that the diver patted his hand on the Sabasia cable seen by the firm.

The company also deployed ships, drones and divers with sea scooters to find out how its software can identify the presence of these vehicles.

And, the team tested if their cable could “hear” a ship that could immerse its anchor in water.

When lighting pulses travel with a fiber optic strand, small reflection Sometimes bounce back With that line. These reflections are affected by factors including temperature, vibration or physical disturbances for cable.

Noticeing a temperature change with part of a buried cable may reveal that the part has become unbalanced.

AP Sensing shows me a video of a person walking in a lawn before raising a rifle and firing during a test. A fiber optic cable buried in the ground picked up the entire sequence at a distance of a few meters.

“You look at each leg,” the CEO Clemens Pahal says, “Pedayatri appears as a gun tablet in the form of brief blips or lines and a large splaos.

With this technique, it is possible to work towards travel, along with the approximate shape of a ship passing over a sub -cubble -its location and in some circumstances. This satellite imagery, or even automated identification system (AIS) can be correlated with a record, which is transmitted to most ships at all times.

If an unused, “dark” fiber is available, or with sufficient free channels, the existing fiber is possible to add monitoring capabilities to optic cables, if possible.

Although there are boundaries. David Web at Aston University says that fiber optic sensing technology cannot lift disturbances from far away, and you need to install signal listening tools, or inquiries, every 100 km (62 miles) or with a cable.

AP Sensing says it can vibrate at a distance of hundreds of meters but “usually not several kilometers away”. The company confirms that its technology is currently deployed at some cable installations in the North Sea, although further comments decline.

Paul Heiden, CEO of a Dutch firm Optics 11, says, “People actually need a initial warning, what to do, what to do, what to do, a Dutch firm, which also creates a fiber optic acoustic sensing system.”

Mr. Heiden argues that fully installed cables can be particularly useful for the purpose of monitoring marine activity – a hearing cables can, say, 100 km from a significant port, or a major gas pipeline or telecom cable, instead of those assets.

This can give the operators observable of plant traffic in the area, and potentially advance information of a ship towards a significant property.

Optics11’s fiber optic hearing technique can be deployed on military submarines, says Mr. Heiden, and says that the firm is soon to start a monitoring cable tested somewhere on the floor of the Baltic Sea.

The demand for fiber optic sensing technology is increasing, a network testing and measurement company in a wive solutions Douglas Clag says: “We see the number of requests increasing.”

Some cables damaged in recent incidents were performed by Swedish cable company Hextronic, heads of submarine cable business in Christian pris, Central Europe, Middle East, Africa and firm.

Acousic sensing is an emerging technique that Sri Pras suggests that the future will become more common. But to protect a relatively low cable from sabotage, in case of physical strengthening.

They say that today’s fiber already folds metal casting in optic cable and welded around the fiber. There are also “Armary Wire”, thick metal cords, running along the outer parts of the cable and in some cases are two layers of these cords. “The channel towards Britain where you have a lot of rocks and a lot of fishing, you want to double-armor,” Sri Preis says.

But should a vessel be deliberately drawn its heavy anchor into a double-armor cable, it will almost certainly damage it, it is called Sri Pras-there is a force of conflict or pulling action.

Although it is possible to bury the cable in the seals for additional protection, it can be prohibitedly expensive at a long distance and at a depth below a few dozen meters.

“Cables break all the time,” says the telecom market research firm, Telecography Research Analyst Lane Burdet. She said, “The number of cable defects per year has actually been stable in the last several years,” she says that 1-200 defects that are generally per year have never increased despite the installation of more Sabasia cables during that period.

Ms. Burdate also noted that, even when a cable is separated, the telecom network usually has significant excesses, meaning that the last users often do not see a lot of disruption in their service.

Nevertheless, the visible military reaction to the cable break in the Baltic Sea is welcome, Thorson Bena, the co-founder and director of the Global Public Policy Institute, says a think tank: “It’s good that NATO and European Union have woken up.”

And when the cable sensing technique can be useful, its efficacy in case of preventing loss is on the fact that coastguards or military patrolling can receive an alert about how quickly potential sabotage and response. “The question is how soon you can establish contact with a ship,” the banner says.