HIGH PERFORMANCE SUBMARINE CABLE PRODUCTS BY DAISHI MASUDA
T
he OCC-SCxxx series optical submarine cable, well known for its “3 Divided Steel Segment� core design, has a track record supported by more than 250,000km of cable that has been supplied for various projects worldwide since its first manufacturing in the 1980s. This unique core design, providing robust high-pressure resistance and low torque, offers the ideal structure to bring out the full advantages of recent high performance optical fibers. Also, OCC-SCxxx series design realizes the high level of reliability as well as electrical and mechanical
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performance with long distance system requirements while realizing a compact and cost-effective design.
OPTICAL SUBMARINE CABLE DESIGN.
In order to look for the future, one should begin by looking back over the history of OCC SCxxx series, shown in Figure 1. The structure of submarine cables have been changing gradually. In 1983, the first commercial optical submarine cables were manufactured in Japan. OCCSC100 structure utilized a tight-unit
structure where fibers were fixed in an UV cured buffer that became the core of the submarine cable. In 2006, after 23 years of first optical submarine cables production, the submarine cable structure was modified to a loose tube design as called OCCSC3xx Series. While the OCC-SC100 structure utilized a tight-buffer fiber unit design, in the OCC-SC3xx Series fibers were directly inserted into the 3-Divided steel segments with the water blocking compound. By 2011, mass production of OCCSC5xx Series submarine cables started. The OCC-SC5xx series is a