Undersea cables could be used as environmental sensors
Scientists at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) have discovered a novel technique that can turn undersea power and telecom cables into arrays of environmental sensors, opening the door to extensive ocean monitoring.
The findings, published in Science Magazine, could revolutionize the way we monitor our planet by providing real-time environmental data from the seafloor.
Despite advancements in sensor technology, much of the world’s oceans remain unmonitored due to the high costs and technical challenges of installing and maintaining permanent ocean-floor sensors. This lack of monitoring leaves a significant gap in geophysical data, limiting our understanding of the Earth’s structure and dynamic behavior. Detecting tsunamis
Previous research by NPL and its partners demonstrated that submarine cables could be repurposed as sensors to detect underwater earthquakes. However, each cable could only function as a single sensor, and measurements were confined to changes over the cable’s entire length.
The new research shows that certain cables can be converted into an array of sensors rather than just one. The team, including researchers from the University of Edinburgh, the British Geological Survey, the Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica, and Google, tested the technique on a 5,860 km-long submarine optical fiber link between the UK and Canada, provided by EXA Infrastructure.
