A New Challenge and Opportunity for the Submarine Telecommunications Industry – Ocean Observatory Networks

The ocean sciences are beginning a new phase in which scientists will enter the ocean environment and adaptively observe the earth-ocean system using innovative facilities called ocean observatories. This represents a new opportunity for the submarine telecommunications industry, but at the same time presents new challenges, in part because most of the principal design drivers for ocean observatories differ from those for commercial submarine telecommunications systems. This paper discusses the nature of ocean observatories and describes some of the design issues using the NEPTUNE regional cabled observatory as an example.