Presentation of submarine fiber communication

Abstract This introductory chapter provides a high-level view of submarine cables by Jose Chesnoy, PhD, editor of the book, and introduces the second edition of the book Undersea Fiber Communication Systems. As of 2015, the capacity of a submarine cable has increased by more than a factor of 200,000 since the introduction of optical technologies in the 1980s, leading to a capacity approaching 20 Tbit/s per fiber pair, equivalent to several billion simultaneous phone calls! Submarine cables constitute a continuous meshing of 1 million km of optical cables at the bottom of the world’s oceans; no other technology can now compete with them, and they are transporting 99% of the international voice and data traffic. Optical systems are based on four main inventions: optical fiber, semiconductor optoelectronics, optical amplification, and coherent transmission supported by powerful digital microelectronics. These four cornerstones have now all been implemented in submarine cables. This new edition covers the diverse technical field of submarine networks from fundamentals to operational including design, equipment, new applications and marine operations at the maturity of the optical era.