Power and data over fiber for sea-floor observatories

For the last decades, different technical solutions have been investigated to transmit power and data over fiber. In 2012, Lau et al reported the development of an extension of seafloor observatory by this technology. However, the system was only dedicated to an extension of few hundreds of meters from the junction box, which is too limiting for many scientific applications of cabled sea-floor observatories. Recently, this technology was then extended to transmission of power and data over one single fiber up to 10 km [2]. This quasi-all-optical network was demonstrated capable of transmitting data at 5Mbits/s while providing 160mW to the instrument. In this presentation, we will first present the technology that was developed and how the different parts were optimized. Then we will expose its use for acoustic applications