National Physical Laboratory (NPL), Teddington, UK.
School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.
Science. 2022 May 20;376(6595):874-879. doi: 10.1126/science.abo1939. Epub 2022 May 19.
Optical fiber-based sensing technology can drastically improve Earth observations by enabling the use of existing submarine communication cables as seafloor sensors. Previous interferometric and polarization-based techniques demonstrated environmental sensing over cable lengths up to 10,500 kilometers. However, measurements were limited to the integrated changes over the entire length of the cable. We demonstrate the detection of earthquakes and ocean signals on individual spans between repeaters of a 5860-kilometer-long transatlantic cable rather than the whole cable. By applying this technique to the existing undersea communication cables, which have a repeater-to-repeater span length of 45 to 90 kilometers, the largely unmonitored ocean floor could be instrumented with thousands of permanent real-time environmental sensors without changes to the underwater infrastructure.
基于光纤的传感技术可以通过将现有的海底通信电缆用作海底传感器，极大地改善地球观测。以前的干涉和偏振技术已经证明，可以在长达 10500 公里的电缆上进行环境传感。然而，测量仅限于整个电缆长度上的综合变化。我们在一条 5860 公里长的跨大西洋电缆的中继器之间的个别跨度上检测到地震和海洋信号，而不是整个电缆。通过将这项技术应用于现有的海底通信电缆，这些电缆的中继器到中继器的跨度为 45 至 90 公里，可以在不改变水下基础设施的情况下，用数千个永久性实时环境传感器来对大部分未监测到的海底进行仪器化。
