OPTICAL UNDERSEA CABLE SYSTEMS TRENDS

This paper reviews the evolution of under sea cable technology from th e telegraph cables of the mid-nineteenth century to the optical unders ea cables of today. Future systems will use optical fiber amplifiers w hich offer significant technical and economic advantages. Consequently , emphasis is placed on problems associated with the accumulation of s mall, second-order effects in long lengths of optical fiber, and speci fically their impact on the 5-Gb/s optically amplified transoceanic un dersea systems scheduled to be deployed in 1995. We also describe tech nology options for achieving further capacity increases, among them th e use of optical solitons, and trends towards networked undersea cable systems with automatic restoration features.