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1. INTRODUCTION
In response to demands for operation in deeper
water, and the associated need for longer ROV
umbilical cables, new technologies are being
adopted by offshore energy operators. Among
these are singlemode optical fiber and digital
signal multiplexing. This paper reviews the state
of the art of aspects of these important
technological advances.
2. FIBER OPTICS
In recent years, trends in ocean activity have
required operations in increasingly deep water. In
the offshore oil industry, this is generally for the
exploration and development of deeper and/or
more remote petroleum reservoirs. ROV systems
deployed in such areas require longer and
stronger umbilical cables that can also handle the
ever-increasing data rates required for digitized
video, high resolution imaging sonars, and digital
networks where total data rates often exceed
1 Gbit/s. The beneficial signal characteristics and
physical properties of optical fiber enable much
longer telemetry systems than are possible with
copper alone.
The dominance of fiber in telecommunications
systems is a strong indicator of its significant
advantages over copper for data signals. As
cable lengths increase, the high signal attenuation
of copper, even coaxial cable, quickly becomes
unacceptable. Optical fibers provide not only
much lower attenuation, as shown in Figure 1, but
also smaller size, lower weight, and much larger
signal bandwidth than copper.
Fibers low
attenuation is also constant with signal frequency
up to the microwave band, eliminating the need
for equalizers in the end equipment. Its inherent
immunity to electro-magnetic interference (EMI) is
another valuable property in electrically noisy
environments.
Optical fiber has an important size and weight
advantage over insulated electrical conductors.
As umbilical cables get longer, their increased
TOTAL LOSS
0.5 dB
0.50 dB
0.25 dB
0.75 dB
0.5 dB
1.25 dB
3.0 dB
4.25 dB
Transmitter
POWER
0 dBm
0.5 dB
4.75 dB
5.0 dB
9.75 dB
0.5 dB
10.25 dB
3.0 dB
13.25 dB
0.5 dB
13.75 dB
0.05 dB
13.80 dB
Connectors
0.5 dB
14.30 dB
Dispersion Penalty
1.0 dB
15.30 dB
-15.3 dBm
Receiver sensitivity
-20.0 dBm
Margin
4.7 dB