Sonardyne International has formed a new joint venture with the world-famous Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in the US to launch the world’s first commercially available subsea optical communication system, BlueComm.
The UK firm, headquartered in Hampshire, told delegates at the Oceanology International conference in London last month that the JV, known as Lumasys, is working to bring BlueComm to market.
Sonardyne said that the wireless communications technology promises to enable subsea data to be transferred at speeds equivalent to broadband and that optical communications can be used to provide ultra-high data rates in typical deepwater environments where there is little or no ambient light and turbidity is minimal.
It is best suited to applications where significant user bandwidth is required or high levels of ambient noise preclude the use of traditional acoustic technologies.
The Sonardyne/WHOI technology uses high power light emitting diodes as the transmitter with a receiver based on photomultiplier technology that is so sensitive it can detect light energy at the level of a few photons.
BlueComm operates over short ranges of a few tens or even hundreds of metres.
It uses an array of high power light emitting diodes (LEDs) that are rapidly modulated to transmit data. The receivers use photomultiplier tubes that are so sensitive that they can detect light energy at the level of a few photons.