What is it about?
Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) is a way to use fibre optic cables in the sea, including old cables laid for telecommunications traffic, to listen to the ocean and earth. DAS has been used to listen to ships, whales, earthquakes and many other phenomena, but this is the first time it has been demonstrated to be capable of receiving acoustic communications.
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Photo by Yannis Papanastasopoulos on Unsplash
Why is it important?
This successful reception and decoding of acoustic communication by DAS represents the first fundamentally new physical underwater communications technology since optical communication was introduced in the 60´s. It opens the door to underwater vehicles and smart sensors to report important events immediately to shore, wirelessly, if they are near a Fibre Optic cable, which is often the case around seabed installations.
Perspectives
I find this a very exciting new development. It was not unexpected, but it is nevertheless an important step towards having teams of autonomous underwater vehicles and smart sensors working in and around undersea installations be able to wirelessly report in real-time.
Prof. John POTTER
NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: First Demonstration of Underwater Acoustic Communication from Sea to Shore via an Optical Fibre using Distributed Acoustic Sensing, September 2024, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE),
DOI: 10.1109/ucomms64662.2024.10847975.
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