Systems and Construction Technologies

Construction Technology for Use in Repeatered

Transoceanic Optical Submarine Cable Systems
YONEYAMA Kenichi, SAKUYAMA Hiroshi, HAGISAWA Akira

Abstract
In terms of capacity, distance and number of connecting points, the requirements for submarine cable systems have
been increasing every year. The key to the implementation of the most advanced ultra-long distance transoceanic
submarine cable system of large capacity lies in how to introduce and apply the latest optical signaling technology to
the actual systems design and construction. This paper introduces the construction technologies that are being ap-
plied to large-capacity, ultra-long distance submarine cable systems from the perspectives of system design,
equipment fabrication, system assembly and system construction.

Keywords
submarine cable, systems, system construction, gain equalization, dispersion equalization

A submarine cable system is constructed using processes

1. Introduction
that include system design, equipment design/manufacturing,
assembly/testing of the submarine equipment by connecting
Following the rapid increase of image distribution in the In- submarine cables and submarine repeaters, constructing sub-
ternet environment and its increased speed, the demands of marine plant using cable ships, installing terminating equip-
communication traffic have been growing every year. In re- ment, constructing land plants and performing system testing.
sponse to the traffic demand for international communica- The period required from design to completion of a submar-
tions, innovative technologies, aimed at increasing the capaci- ine cable system is about a year for a small-scale system or two
ty of long-distance optical signal transmission systems, are years in the case of a large-scale system.
being researched and developed continuously. Optical sub-
marine cables applying these latest technologies are being
3. System Design
planned and constructed one after another.

The system design work required for a submarine cable sys-

2. Processes of Submarine Cable System Construction
tem includes the submarine plant design, optical signal per-
formance design, the power feeding design, monitoring
Fig. 1 shows an example of the process of submarine cable network design and other (marine, land and in-station) designs.
system construction.
3.1 Submarine Plant Design

Initially, a straight line diagram (SLD) showing the config-

uration of the submarine plant is drawn up based on the cable
route and the marine chart information. The type of each sub-
marine cable to be utilized is decided based on the sea depth
and the geological context of its location and these functions
are reflected in the SLD. Fig. 2 shows the types of submarine
cables and the depths at which they may be applied. The SLD
also outlines the positions of the submarine repeaters, the joint
box (JB) information and the land cable lengths. The inter-
Fig. 1 Process of submarine cable system construction. vals of the submarine repeaters (repeater span) are decided at

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 Systems and Construction Technologies
Construction Technology for Use in Repeatered Transoceanic Optical Submarine Cable
Systems

Table Example of the main signal performance design (power

budget).

the signal quality index generally used in the submarine sys-

Fig. 2 Submarine cable types and applicable depths. tems industry.

the optical signal performance design stage, because they af- 3.3 Power Feed Design
fect the optical signal transmission performance. The SLD is
updated sequentially by feeding back the results of the ma- The power feeding equipment (PFE) is installed in the land-
rine surveys and by the sequence of work. ing station to supply power to the submarine repeaters, using
the power feeding line located in the submarine cable. Each
3.2 Main Signal Performance Design submarine plant has multiple submarine repeaters connected in
series. These are powered by a 1.1-ampere regulated current
The optical signal performance is designed based on the ca- from the PFE. The resistance of the submarine cable is about
ble length, specified in the SLD. The technical trend of opti- 0.8 Ω/km. The voltage may drop due to; the submarine repeat-
cal signal transmission is the wavelength-division multiplex- ers, the earth potential difference between the landing points
ing of 10-Gbps optical signals. The optical signal performance (variable between about 0 to 0.3 v/km depending on regions)
is designed by considering; the cable length, the loss of opti- and due to the insertion of spare repeaters and/or spare ca-
cal fibers, the optical output power and noise figure (NF) of bles. A power feeding voltage of about 11 kV is thus required
submarine repeaters, the number of multiplexed wavelengths, for a system with a length of 9,000 km and a four fiber pair
the performance of the 10-Gbps optical transceivers, the qual- arrangement.
ity degradation, due to transmission of optical signals (trans- The power is supplied by using a redundant configuration
mission penalty), the manufacturing margins of the equip- with a dual-end power feeding capability, in which PFE is in-
ment and systems and the repair margin according to the service stalled in the stations at both ends of the system. One PFE feeds
life. In this step, the intervals of the submarine repeaters are positive voltage while the other feeds negative voltage, so that
adjusted to preserve the required transmission quality and each PFE feeds half of the required voltage. Even when ei-
manifacturing/repair margins. Decreasing the repeater inter- ther PFE needs to be serviced due to a fault, the system
vals improves the signal to noise ratio (SNR) of the optical operation can be continued because the other PFE can feed all
signals and makes it possible to preserve the margins, but it of the voltage required by the system (single-end power feed-
also increases the number of repeaters and the system cost. It ing system).
is therefore required to select the longest possible repeater in-
tervals, so far as they can preserve the desirable system mar- 3.4 Monitoring Network Design
gins.
Table shows an example of optical signal performance de- Each landing station of the submarine cable system fea-
sign (power budget) for a 10-Gbps × 96-wave, 9,000-km tures Element Management System (EMS) that monitor both
system. The optical signal design uses the Q-value, which is the system and its various equipments. The EMS in the two

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 Special Issue on Optical Submarine Cable System

large number of repeaters are used and the dispersion manage-

ment technology for ultra-long distance transmission of high-
density wavelength-division multiplexed signals without trans-
mission penalties is applied.

4.1 Gain Equalization Technology

With a 10-Gbps × 96-wave, 9,000-km system, it is necessa-

ry to connect about 130 No. 28-nm optical amplification band
submarine repeaters in series. As the requirements of gain flat-
ness within the amplification bandwidth for the overall sys-
tem is only about 8 dB, the gain flatness of the submarine
repeaters is required to be very accurate. In addition, the loss
of the optical fibers in the submarine cables has a slight wave-
length dependency and its effect is not ignorable. Therefore,
the shape of the amplification bandwidth of submarine repeat-
ers should be designed in consideration of the wavelength
dependency of the optical fiber loss, so that the amplification
bandwidth in each repeated section is flat.
During the actual manufacturing process, the accuracy to
Fig. 3 Example of monitoring network design. gain flatness of the submarine repeaters and submarine cables
is restricted, which often causes errors in the actual system,
stations are interconnected via an order-wire channel that uti- making it hard to achieve the optimum gain flatness required
lizes the overhead of the 10-Gbps optical signal of the submar- for a 9,000-km system. This issue is solved by compensating
ine line terminating equipment (SLTE) so that the EMS at one the accumulated gain flatness errors by inserting gain equaliz-
station can also monitor the equipment status of the other sta- ers in the submarine equipment assembly process and by con-
tion. necting the submarine repeaters to the submarine cables.
Fig. 3 shows an example of a monitoring network configu- Fig. 4 -A) shows the concept of gain equalization. The gain
ration for a submarine cable system. The server and client equalizers include the shape equalizer for correcting the accu-
terminal of the EMS are connected to a router at the station, mulated amplification bandwidth fluctuations and the tilt
and the router is connected to the order wire channel of the 10-
Gbps SLTE, which is subsequently connected to the router at
the other station as well as to its EMS server and client. Con-
necting the landing stations to a remote monitoring center at a
distant location via exclusive lines and networks allows the
client terminal at the remote monitoring station to monitor the
status of the landing stations and of the submarine plant.

4. Detailed Submarine Plant Design and System

Adjustment Technologies

The submarine plant of a large-capacity ultra-long distance

submarine cable system requires a high-accuracy gain equali-
zation technology in order to achieve the uniform transmis-
sion of wavelength-division multiplexed signals without any Fig. 4 Gain equalization and dispersion management of submarine
decrease in their levels. This function is needed even when a plant.

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 Systems and Construction Technologies
Construction Technology for Use in Repeatered Transoceanic Optical Submarine Cable
Systems

equalizer for correcting the tilts inside the amplification band-

width. The shape equalizers are designed and fabricated by
simulating the error shape based on the gain shapes of the am-
plification bandwidth of the submarine repeaters and are in-
serted after every optimum number of repeaters. The tilt
equalizers are inserted after the selected shape equalizers with
optimum tilts according to the characteristics of the actually
manufactured repeaters and cables.

4.2 Dispersion Management Technology

Fig. 4-B) shows an example of a dispersion map, specifical-

ly of the dispersion management fibers (DMF) applied to a 10-
Gbps × 96-wave, 9,000-km system. Optical fibers with both
positive and negative wavelength dispersions are combined in
the repeatered sections so that the aggregate dispersion value
of each repeatered section is slightly negative. The negative Fig. 5 Examples of the characteristics of a manufactured 5,800-km
dispersion accumulated due to multiple repeaters' spans is cor- submarine plant section.
rected in the dispersion compensation sections that are inser-
ted after each optimum number of repeaters. dispersion compensation, both described in Section 4, are al-
Here, too, the dispersion value of the optical fibers in each so performed as a part of this process.
repeater's span shall be restrictedly controlled during the ac- Since the gain flatness of the submarine repeaters varies
tual manufacturing process. Therefore, the required accuracy slightly depending on the repeater temperatures, the system test
is achieved by selecting and combining optimum optical fiber of an ultra-long distance system with a high accuracy specifi-
pieces and adjusting the line length per repeatered section. The cation is performed by shielding the submarine repeater with a
accumulated manufacturing errors, caused by the multiple re- thermostat controlled cover in order to maintain the same tem-
peaters' spans are compensated at the dispersion adjustment perature as that of the ocean bed.
sections that are inserted after each group of ten repeaters' span. Fig. 5 shows examples of measurements of the gain flat-
ness and dispersion values of a section of about 5,800 km of an
actual 9,000-km system. The measured data indicates that the
5. System Assembly/Test
submarine equipment has been manufactured with extremely
high accuracy in accordance with its design specification.
The submarine repeaters are manufactured by NEC Yama-
nashi, Ltd., transported to the submarine cable factory of OCC
6. System Construction and Commissioning Test
in Kitakyushu and then connected to the submarine cables to
assemble the submarine plant. At this stage, the submarine
plant is subjected to a performance test of the following items During the laying of the submarine plant using a cable ship,
before loading it on the cable ship. This confirms that the de- the insulation resistance, voltage drop, optical fiber trace and
signed performance is optimum. optical SNR are measured periodically to make sure that it is
● Insulation of the power feeding line, voltage drop dur- not being damaged in the laying process.
ing power feeding. The installation of the terminal equipment in the landing
● Trace measurement of optical fibers (C-OTDR). stations and the laying of the land cable from the beach man-
● Wavelength dispersion of optical fibers. holes to the landing stations are performed in parallel with the
● Gain flatness laying of the submarine plant.
● Optical spectrum and optical SNR (Signal to Noise Ra- When the submarine plant has been laid, the land cables and
tio). the terminal equipment have been connected, system testing on
The insertion of gain equalizers and adjustments for the following items is performed.

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 Special Issue on Optical Submarine Cable System

● Insulation resistance of submarine plant, voltage drop.

● Optical SNR and Q-value (error rate).
● Monitoring network test (alarm, monitor, etc.).
● Long-term stability (Q-value, alarm).
It is after this system testing that the constructed optical
submarine cable system is delivered to the customer.

7. Conclusion

The construction process of submarine cable systems is per-

formed continuously from the beginning of the cable manu-
facturing, throughout the assembly/testing of the submarine
plant, to the loading in the cable ship and the cable laying. Any
interruption of this process will cause important effects on the
delivery term and costs. It is therefore essential to meticulous-
ly plan the specifications of the equipment and cables at the
system design stage, as well as for the correction techniques to
be applied during the submarine plant assembly. This task
should be completed before proceeding to the manufacturing
and construction stages. It is the process of design, assembly,
construction and testing described above that makes it possi-
ble to provide high-quality submarine cable systems in a time-
ly manner. NEC is committed to introducing the latest
technologies, while maintaining their present high quality
standards. We may thus contribute to the construction of in-
ternational and domestic submarine networks as a company
with a global reputation for competently leading the submar-
ine cable industry.

Authors' Profiles
YONEYAMA Kenichi
Senior Manager
Submarine Network Division
Broadband Networks Operations Unit
NEC Corporation

SAKUYAMA Hiroshi
Senior Manager
Submarine Network Division
Broadband Networks Operations Unit
NEC Corporation

HAGISAWA Akira
Assistant Manager
Submarine Network Division
Broadband Networks Operations Unit
NEC Corporation

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