UNDERWATER EQUIPMENT AND COMMUNICATION SYSTEM

Abstract

This underwater equipment (100) comprises a first optical fiber (110), a second optical fiber (120), a conventional pumped laser (101) and at least one backup pumped laser (102). The conventional pumped laser (101) is used to provide the pumped light to a first optical amplification unit (150) located at the first optical fiber (110) and a second optical amplification unit (160) located at the second optical fiber (120). An input port of an optical element (130) of the first optical fiber (110) and / or the second optical fiber (120) is connected to the conventional pumped laser (101) and the backup pumped laser (102). The backup pumped laser (102) is used to compensate the output power when the output power of the conventional pumped laser (101) is lower than a target output power. Figure for abstract: Fig 2

Description

Title of the invention: UNDERWATER EQUIPMENT AND COMMUNICATION SYSTEM Technical field

[0001] The present application relates to the field of optical communication technology, in particular relates to underwater equipment and a communication system. TECHNICAL CONTEXT

[0002] As an important means of international communication, a submarine cable communication system generally needs to be able to serve for 25 years, but in practice, the submarine cable communication system faces the challenge of system performance degradation due to the aging of elements in the middle and end of the service life. An optical repeater in the submarine cable communication system is essentially based on EDFA (Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier) ​​optical amplification technology, and in the communication system composed of optical fiber amplifiers, the aging of the pumped laser is one of the main sources of performance deterioration of the submarine cable communication system.

[0003] In the middle and end of the service life of the submarine cable communication system, the aging of the pumped laser causes the reduction of the output power of the optical repeater; which will aggravate the loss due to the aging of other optical elements and the aging of the optical fibers of the line, causing the deterioration of the Optical Signal Noise Ratio (OSNR) performance of the line, and even causing service interruption in severe cases.

[0004] When the pumped laser ages, the submarine cable communication system needs to be maintained by additionally arranging optical repeaters at the line to increase the optical power of the line and improve the deterioration of the system performance due to the aging of elements. However, during the maintenance, the submarine cables of the construction ship need to be cut to perform the maintenance, which will cause the interruption of the service of the whole system and a very high maintenance cost at the later stage due to the long maintenance time. DISCLOSURE OF THE INVENTION

[0005] The present application provides underwater equipment and a communication system for solving the problem that when the performance of the pumped laser in the submarine cable communication system deteriorates, the power of pumping output no longer meets the output requirements, causing the service life of the submarine cable communication system to fail to meet the requirements.

[0006] According to a first aspect, in certain embodiments of the present application, underwater equipment is provided, which comprises a first optical fiber, a second optical fiber, a conventional pumped laser and at least one backup pumped laser.

[0007] The conventional pumped laser is used for supplying the pumped light to a first optical amplification unit located at the first optical fiber and a second optical amplification unit located at the second optical fiber. An input port of an optical element of the first optical fiber and / or the second optical fiber is connected to the conventional pumped laser and the backup pumped laser respectively, wherein the optical element is used for optically coupling to the conventional pumped laser and the backup pumped laser; and the backup pumped laser is used for compensating the output power when the output power of the conventional pumped laser is lower than a target output power, wherein the compensated output power is the lost output power of the conventional pumped laser in an aging state.

[0008] The backup pumped laser is configured to be in a shutdown state before receiving a first instruction, and to start operating and emitting the pumped light after receiving the first instruction, wherein the first instruction is a control instruction issued when the output power of the conventional pumped laser is lower than the target output power. In the present application, providing at least one backup pumped laser in the underwater equipment makes it possible to compensate for the pump output power of the underwater equipment by starting the backup pumped laser when the conventional pumped laser ages, thereby extending the service life of the underwater fiber optic communication.

[0009] In some possible implementations, the backup pumped laser is configured to be in a shutdown state before receiving a second instruction, and to start operating and emitting the pumped light after receiving the second instruction, wherein the second instruction is a control instruction issued when an aging value of the subsea equipment is greater than a threshold value. The subsea equipment may compare the calculated aging value with the threshold value and start the backup pumped laser when the aging value of the subsea equipment is greater than the threshold value, such that the pump output power meets the output requirements.

[0010] In some possible embodiments, the conventional pumped laser comprises a first pumped laser and a second pumped laser connected to the laser. emergency pumped.

[0011] An input port of a first optical fiber coupler of the first optical fiber is connected to the first pumped laser; and an output port of the first optical fiber coupler of the first optical fiber is connected to the first optical amplification unit.

[0012] The input port of the optical element of the second optical fiber is connected to the second pumped laser and the backup pumped laser respectively; an output port of the optical element of the second optical fiber is connected to the second optical amplification unit; the first pumped laser is used to supply the pumped light to the first optical amplification unit located at the first optical fiber and the second pumped laser is used to supply the pumped light to the second optical amplification unit located at the second optical fiber. The number of backup pumped lasers to be equipped can be determined by evaluating the reliability of the element and the performance of the system, and the conventional pumped lasers can be equipped at a certain percentage. The periodic configuration of the backup pumped lasers makes it possible to selectively start some backup pumped lasers and reduce costs.

[0013] In some possible embodiments, the underwater equipment comprises at least two first pumped lasers and two second pumped lasers, each of the first pumped lasers provides 50% of the energy to the first optical amplification unit, and each of the second pumped lasers provides 50% of the energy to the second optical amplification unit;

[0014] - or the underwater equipment comprises at least four first pumped lasers and four second pumped lasers, each of the first pumped lasers provides 25% of the energy to the first optical amplification unit, and each of the second pumped lasers provides 25% of the energy to the second optical amplification unit. The underwater equipment is equipped with a redundant pumping optical path, the two conventional pumped lasers are redundant to each other, when one of the conventional pumped lasers is out of service, the other conventional pumped laser on the one hand provides the pumped light, and on the other hand by starting the backup pumped laser in the redundant pumping optical path to a single pair of 2x2 or 4x4 optical fibers, increases the pumping power of the entire EDFA line through the redundant pumping optical path of 2x2 or 4x4.

[0015] In some possible embodiments, only one of the second pumped lasers of the underwater equipment is connected to the backup pumped laser. The additionally arranged backup pumped laser is only used to compensate for the reduction in pump power due to aging, and only one of the conventional pumped lasers of the underwater equipment is connected to the backup pumped laser, which helps to compensate for the pumping output power and also reduce the cost.

[0016] In some possible implementations, the first optical fiber and the second optical fiber belong to the same pair of optical fibers, or the first optical fiber and the second optical fiber belong to different pairs of optical fibers. The first optical fiber may be used to transmit optical signals to a ground base station at the peer end, and the second optical fiber may be used to receive the optical signals transmitted by the ground base station at the peer end.

[0017] In some possible embodiments, the optical element is a polarization combiner or an optical switch. The conventional pumped laser and the backup pumped laser may be optically coupled using the polarization combiner, and the conventional pumped laser and the backup pumped laser may be strobed using the optical switch.

[0018] In some possible implementation forms, each conventional pumped laser is equipped with a backup pumped laser, and the conventional pumped laser and the backup pumped laser can be coupled using the polarization combiner or the optical switch. By equipping the conventional pumped lasers of all the underwater equipment in the entire line of backup pumped lasers, the performance tuning space and granularity of the entire communication system for underwater equipment are improved.

[0019] In some possible embodiments, the underwater equipment is an optical repeater. A backup pumped laser is additionally provided to the optical repeater to compensate for the reduction in output power of the conventional pumped laser due to aging, and by improving the aging of the pumped lasers, the output power of the optical repeater meets the working requirements, and the optical signal-to-noise ratio of the optical repeater is kept stable and the transmission performance is kept stable.

[0020] According to a second aspect, the present application also provides a communication system for underwater equipment, which comprises the underwater equipment on the one hand and comprises on the other hand:

[0021] - a first station, which is used to transmit a first optical signal of data to the underwater equipment through the first optical fiber;

[0022] - a second station, which is used to transmit a second optical signal of data to the underwater equipment through the second optical fiber;

[0023] - the underwater equipment is used for, once the first optical signal of received data, amplify the first received optical data signal and transfer it to the second station, and for, once the second optical data signal is received, amplify the second received optical data signal and transfer it to the first station.

[0024] It is apparent from the above technical solutions that, in some embodiments of the present application, underwater equipment and a communication system are provided. The underwater equipment comprises a first optical fiber, a second optical fiber, a conventional pumped laser, and at least one backup pumped laser. The conventional pumped laser is used for supplying the pumped light to a first optical amplification unit located at the first optical fiber and a second optical amplification unit located at the second optical fiber; an input port of an optical element of the first optical fiber and / or the second optical fiber is connected to the conventional pumped laser and the backup pumped laser respectively, wherein the optical element is used for optically coupling to the conventional pumped laser and the backup pumped laser.The backup pumped laser is used to compensate the output power when the output power of the conventional pumped laser is lower than a target output power, wherein the compensated output power is the lost output power of the conventional pumped laser in an aging state. The backup pumped laser is configured to be in a shutdown state before receiving a first instruction, and to start operating and emitting the pumped light after receiving the first instruction, wherein the first instruction is a control instruction issued when the output power of the conventional pumped laser is lower than the target output power.In the present application, providing at least one backup pumped laser in the underwater equipment makes it possible to compensate for the pump output power of the underwater equipment by starting the backup pumped laser when the conventional pumped laser ages, thereby extending the lifetime of the underwater fiber optic communication. DESCRIPTION OF FIGURES

[0025] The technical solution of the present application will become more clearly apparent during the detailed description of the figures annexed to the embodiments, and it is obvious that the variants of the figures can be obtained by those skilled in the art without creative work.

[0026] [Fig.l] is a structural diagram of an underwater communication system;

[0027] [Fig.2] is a first structural diagram of the underwater equipment in certain embodiments of this application;

[0028] [Fig.3] is a second structural diagram of the underwater equipment in some embodiments of this application;

[0029] [Fig.4] is a third structural diagram of the underwater equipment in some embodiments of this application;

[0030] [Fig.5] is a structural diagram of the communication system for equipment submarines in certain embodiments of the present application.

[0031] In the figures:

[0032] 100 - Underwater equipment; 101 - Conventional pumped laser; 102 - Pumped laser of backup; 110 - First optical fiber; 120 - Second optical fiber; 130 - Optical element; 140 - Optical fiber coupler; 150 - First optical amplification unit; 160 - Second optical amplification unit; 200 - First station; 300 - Second station. METHODS OF IMPLEMENTATION

[0033] The technical solutions of the present invention will be described clearly and completely by the following description with reference to the embodiments, in which said embodiments are only part of the embodiments instead of all embodiments. Other embodiments based on the embodiments of the present invention and obtained by a person skilled in the art without creative work should be included within the scope of protection of the present invention.

[0034] The terms "first" and "second" are illustrative, and cannot be taken to indicate or imply a relative degree of importance or a number of technical features indicated. Thus, features with the words "first" or "second" can be taken to indicate or imply one or more features. In the description of the present invention, unless otherwise indicated, the term "more than one" means two or more. In addition, the terms "mounting", "connecting to each other", and "connection" are to be understood in a broad sense, for example, it can be a fixed connection or a detachable connection, or an integral connection; it can be a mechanical connection or an electrical connection; it can be a direct connection or an indirect connection via an intermediate means, and it can be an internal communication between two components.For those skilled in the art, the above terms may be understood according to the specific situations in the embodiments of the present invention.

[0035] An underwater communication system is a system placed on the seabed or lakebed to perform long-distance data communication. For illustration purposes, the underwater communication system may include an underwater cable communication system.

[0036] As shown in [Fig.l], as an important means of international communication, the submarine cable communication system generally needs to be able to serve for 25 years, but in practice, the submarine cable communication system faces the challenge of system performance degradation due to Aging of elements in the middle and end of the service life. An optical repeater in a submarine cable communication system is essentially based on EDFA (Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier) ​​optical amplification technology, and in the communication system composed of optical fiber amplifiers, the aging of the pumped laser is one of the main sources of deterioration in the performance of the submarine cable communication system.

[0037] In the middle and end of the service life of the submarine cable communication system, the aging of the pumped laser causes the reduction of the output power of the optical repeater; which will aggravate the loss due to the aging of other optical elements and the aging of the optical fibers in the line, causing the deterioration of the performance of the optical signal to noise ratio (OSNR) of the line, and even causing service interruption in severe cases.

[0038] In the related technologies, the pumped laser is designed with considerable derating to suppress the aging tendency of a pumping element, so as to prolong the service life of the underwater optical fiber communication; and because the output current and output power of the pumped laser are limited, the performance of the element itself cannot be optimal, which causes the performance of the element to be wasted and results in that, in severe cases, the system cannot operate at the best performance point.

[0039] In related technologies, when the pumped laser ages, the submarine cable communication system needs to be maintained by additionally arranging optical repeaters at the line to increase the optical power of the line and improve the deterioration of the system performance due to the aging of elements. However, during the maintenance, the submarine cables of the construction ship need to be cut to perform the maintenance, which will cause the interruption of the service of the whole system, a long maintenance time and a very high maintenance cost in the later stage.

[0040] To solve the problem that when the performance of the pumped laser in the submarine cable communication system deteriorates, the pump output power no longer meets the output requirements, causing the service life of the submarine cable communication system to fail to meet the requirements, in some embodiments of the present application, submarine equipment is provided, in which at least one backup pumped laser is provided in the submarine equipment, thereby compensating the pump output power of the submarine equipment by starting the backup pumped laser when the conventional pumped laser ages, thereby prolonging the service life of the submarine optical fiber communication.

[0041] In some embodiments of the present application, a sub-equipment marine 100 is provided. The underwater equipment 100 comprises a first optical fiber 110, a second optical fiber 120, a conventional pumped laser 101 and at least one backup pumped laser 102.

[0042] The conventional pumped laser 101 is used to provide the pumped light to a first optical amplification unit 150 located at the first optical fiber 110 and a second optical amplification unit 160 located at the second optical fiber 120. An input port of an optical element 130 of the first optical fiber 110 and / or the second optical fiber 120 is connected to the conventional pumped laser 101 and the backup pumped laser 102 respectively, wherein the optical element 130 is used to optically couple to the conventional pumped laser 101 and the backup pumped laser 102.

[0043] The backup pumped laser 102 is used to compensate the output power when the output power of the conventional pumped laser 101 is lower than a target output power, wherein the compensated output power is the lost output power of the conventional pumped laser 101 in an aging state. It should be noted that the conventional pumped laser 101 operates normally in the entire service phase of the communication system; while the backup pumped laser 102 does not operate at the beginning of the service of the communication system and starts to operate after receiving the control instruction issued by the underwater equipment 100, or according to the start control instruction issued by the ground station.

[0044] In some embodiments, the backup pumped laser 102 is configured to be in a shutdown state before receiving a first instruction, and to start operating and emitting the pumped light after receiving the first instruction, wherein the first instruction is a control instruction issued when the output power of the conventional pumped laser 101 is lower than the target output power. The underwater equipment 100 can detect the output power of the conventional pumped laser 101 or the underwater equipment 100 in real time, and start the backup pumped laser 102 when the output power is lower than the target output power.

[0045] In some implementations, the backup pumped laser 102 is configured to be in a shutdown state before receiving a second instruction, and to start operating and emitting the pumped light after the second instruction is received, wherein the second instruction is a control instruction issued when an aging value of the subsea equipment 100 is greater than a threshold value. The subsea equipment 100 may also start the backup pumped laser 102 when the calculated aging value is greater than the threshold value. The first instruction and the second instruction may have the same priority, or the first instruction and the second instruction may have different priorities, or not be distinguished.

[0046] The aging value of the underwater equipment 100 can be obtained based on an error rate, an optical signal to noise ratio and the power of the loopback signal of the underwater equipment 100.

[0047] It should be noted that the error rate is the bit error rate, which is the ratio of the number of erroneous bits to the total number of bits in a process where an electrical signal is transformed into an optical signal and transmitted in a WDM system and arrives at the final end of the link, and the optical signal is transformed into an electrical signal by a receiver. The bit error rate is the ultimate value for measuring the transmission quality. In some embodiments, the underwater equipment 100 detects the service performance error rate of the system in real time, the higher the service performance error rate of the system, the higher the aging degree of the system.

[0048] It should be noted that the optical signal to noise ratio is defined as the ratio of the optical signal power to the noise power in an effective optical bandwidth of 0.1 nm. In some embodiments, a ground terminal station may determine whether system aging occurs based on the change in the optical signal to noise ratio (OSNR) of the service optical signal at the receiving end; and may predict the aging trend of the system by monitoring the OSNR change trend in real time, or by regularly testing and comparing the OSNR change.

[0049] In some embodiments, the change in the gain of the optical repeater RPT can be directly detected using OTDR (optical time domain reflection) or COTDR (coherent optical time domain reflection) equipment equipped at the ground terminal station. Based on the change in the RPT gain, it is possible to determine whether aging of the pumped laser occurs. The principle of the OTDR (optical time domain reflection) test is to apply a modulation pulse to the laser and send the test light to the optical transmission line of an object to be measured through an optical direction coupler which is capable of separating the emitted light and the received light.Due to the Rayleigh backscattering effect, the backscattered light returned by various parts of the optical fiber (including optical fiber inhomogeneity, optical connectors, optical fiber joints, optical fiber failures or break points) will show a continuous signal on the time basis of the screen, i.e., near points first, then far points, whose intensity is proportional to the optical transmission power at each point. Obviously, the backscattered light is separated and received by an optical coupler, so that the horizontal axis corresponds in distance form to the time sequence. of the arrival of the backscattered light and the vertical axis represents the intensity of the scattered light in dB and displays it on the screen, which can transform the round-trip time of the optical pulse into the scale of the optical fiber length on the horizontal axis to be directly used to observe the change state of the optical transmission power along the entire optical fiber line.

[0050] It should be noted that the COTDR (coherent optical time domain re-flection) technology is a monitoring method on the underwater part of the submarine cable communication system, which allows that, by transmitting a detection optical pulse signal to the optical fiber, Rayleigh backscattered light occurs continuously along the optical fiber when the optical pulse is transmitted in the optical fiber. Reflections occur at connectors, mechanical joints, breaks or terminations of the optical fibers. A part of the Rayleigh backscattered light and reflected light will be retransmitted to a transmitting end along the optical fiber and will be received by a detector of the COTDR instrument, thereby determining the operating status of the submarine fiber optic cable and the repeater according to the change in the intensity of the received optical pulse.

[0051] In some embodiments, the output end of the optical amplification unit of the underwater equipment 100 is respectively connected to an optical fiber coupler 140, and the optical fiber coupler 140 comprises a first optical fiber coupler located at the first optical fiber 110 and a second optical fiber coupler located at the second optical fiber 120. The first fiber coupler located at the first fiber 110 is used for receiving a first reflected optical signal and transmitting a portion of the first reflected optical signal to the second optical fiber coupler located at the second optical fiber 120, wherein, the first reflected optical signal is obtained by Rayleigh backscattering from the amplified first detection optical signal.The second optical fiber coupler located at the second optical fiber 120 is used for receiving a portion of the first reflected optical signal output by the first optical fiber coupler and outputs said portion of the first reflected optical signal toward the direction of the first station 200. The arrangement of the optical fiber coupler 140 at the output end of the first optical amplification unit 150 or the second optical amplification unit 160 of the underwater equipment 100 will not cause the noise figure of the underwater equipment 100 to deteriorate.By coupling each pair of optical fibers of the underwater equipment 100, i.e., providing a loopback path, the Rayleigh backscattered portion of the detection optical signal incident to the uplink and / or the reflected optical signal may be coupled to the downlink and transmitted by the downlink optical fiber, and when passing through the underwater equipment 100, are / is . amplified by the optical amplification unit in the downward direction, and retransmitted to the ground terminal station, so that the detector of the COTDR instrument receives the detection optical signal more easily and the COTDR instrument detects the aging or failure problem of the conventional pumped laser and starts the backup pumped laser in time, thereby enabling the backup pumped laser to emit the pumped light to compensate for the pump output power of the underwater equipment 100.

[0052] In some embodiments of the present application, a method for detecting submarine optical cable lines using coherent optical time domain reflection (COTDR) equipment may comprise:

[0053] A detection equipment of the submarine cable line outputs a detection signal, and the detection signal inputted to the first optical amplification unit 150 is divided into a first detection signal and a second detection signal. The two detection signals follow different paths to detect the states of the optical amplification unit and the optical cable lines connecting the optical amplification unit.

[0054] The first detection signal is divided and then directly coupled to the output end of the second optical amplification unit 160 in a direction different from that of the first optical amplification unit 150 to form a first loopback path, and a first detection loopback signal is output and returns to the optical cable line. The first detection signal is divided and then directly coupled to the output end of the second optical amplification unit 160 to form a first loopback path, and the first detection loopback signal is output to the main path of the uplink or downlink. The first detection loopback signal is a direct coupling loopback signal, and the output first detection loopback signal is measured to obtain the power of the first detection loopback signal.The direction of the second optical amplification unit 160 is different from that of the first optical amplification unit 150, for example, during downlink detection, the first optical amplification unit 150 is used for downlink transmission, and the second optical amplification unit 160 is used for uplink transmission. When the first optical amplification unit 150 is a downlink optical amplification unit, the state of the downlink submarine optical cable line can be detected according to the power of the first detection loopback signal and the power of the second detection loopback signal; and when the first optical amplification unit 150 is an uplink optical amplification unit, the state of the uplink submarine optical cable line can be detected according to the power of the first detection loopback signal and the . power of the second detection loop signal.

[0055] The second detection signal is looped at the output end of the second optical amplification unit 160 through the first optical amplification unit 150 to form a second loopback path, and outputs a second detection loopback signal. The second detection signal enters the optical cable line through the first optical amplification unit 150. The second detection signal that passes through the first optical amplification unit 150 is looped at the output end of the second optical amplification unit 160 to form a second loopback path for outputting a second detection loopback signal on the main path of the uplink or downlink. The second detection loopback signal is measured to obtain the power of the second detection loopback signal.The detection equipment emits pulsed light, the first detection feedback signal being a pulse signal, and the power of the second detection feedback signal depending on the feedback time and the pulse width.

[0056] The state of the submarine optical cable line is detected based on the power of the first detection loopback signal and the power of the second detection loopback signal.

[0057] It should be noted that the number of the backup pumped laser 102 to be equipped for the underwater equipment 100 may be determined by evaluating the reliability of the element and the performance of the system, and the backup pumped lasers 102 are configured on a certain percentage of the conventional pumped lasers 101.

[0058] In some embodiments, the underwater equipment 100 comprises a plurality of conventional pumped lasers 101, and each of the conventional pumped lasers 101 comprises a first pumped laser and a second pumped laser connected to the backup pumped laser;

[0059] - the input port of the first optical fiber coupler of the first optical fiber 110 is connected to the first pumped laser; and the output port of the first optical fiber coupler of the first optical fiber 110 is connected to the first optical amplification unit 150;

[0060] - the input port of the optical element 130 of the second optical fiber 120 is connected to the second pumped laser and the backup pumped laser 102 respectively; and the output port of the optical element 130 of the second optical fiber 120 is connected to the second optical amplification unit 160;

[0061] - the first pumped laser is used to provide the pumped light to the first optical amplification unit 150 located at the first optical fiber 110 and the second pumped laser is used to provide the pumped light to the second optical amplification unit 160 located at the second optical fiber 120.

[0062] It should be noted that the first optical fiber 110 and the second optical fiber 120 belong to the same pair of optical fibers, or the first optical fiber 110 and the second optical fiber 120 belong to different pairs of optical fibers. In some embodiments, the first optical fiber 110 may be used to transmit optical signals to the ground base station at the peer end, and the second optical fiber 120 may be used to receive the optical signals transmitted by the ground base station at the peer end.

[0063] In some embodiments, the underwater equipment 100 comprises at least two first pumped lasers and two second pumped lasers, each of the first pumped lasers provides 50% of the energy to the first optical amplification unit 150, and each of the second pumped lasers provides 50% of the energy to the second optical amplification unit 160;

[0064] - or the underwater equipment 100 comprises at least four first pumped lasers and four second pumped lasers, each of the first pumped lasers provides 25% of the energy to the first optical amplification unit, and each of the second pumped lasers provides 25% of the energy to the second optical amplification unit, that is, the output of the four pumped lasers is coupled by a coupling unit and then transferred to the four optical amplification units to two fiber pairs, and each pumped laser provides a quarter of the pump energy to each amplification unit, therefore, the failure of one of the pumps will have less impact on the optical signal-to-noise ratio of the system. In the present embodiment, only one of the several second pumped lasers of the underwater equipment 100 is connected to the backup pumped laser 102.The backup pumped laser 102 is arranged on a single conventional pumped laser 101 of the underwater equipment 100, thereby compensating for the reduction in pump power due to aging and reducing the cost.

[0065] As shown in [Fig.2], for example, the underwater equipment 100 adopts 2x2 single-fiber-pair protection, i.e., after being coupled by a coupler, the output of two conventional pump lasers is supplied to two single-fiber-pair optical amplifier units respectively at a ratio of 50%:50%, based on two conventional pumped lasers, a backup pumped laser is additionally provided, and the backup pumped laser and the conventional pumped lasers are optically coupled using a polarization combiner (PBC).

[0066] As an example, the underwater equipment 100 adopts protection with a single pair of 4x4 optical fibers, in the 4x4 pumping optical path used by the underwater equipment 100, [Fig.3] shows a second structural diagram of the underwater equipment 100, and the implementation principle is similar and will not be not described here.

[0067] The principle of implementation of the 4x8 pumped lasers used by the underwater equipment 100 is similar and will not be described here.

[0068] The underwater equipment 100 provided in some embodiments of the present application establishes a COTDR optical signal coupling loopback path between the uplink and downlink fiber optic links of the same pair of optical fibers, in order to provide the pumped light to the optical amplification unit by cross-connecting the first fiber optic coupler and the second fiber optic coupler to each other. In addition, each 2x2 fiber optic coupler of the first stage couples the pumped lights from two pumped lasers and outputs two sub-pumped lights of the first stage. Each 2x2 fiber optic coupler of the second stage couples the two sub-pumped lights of the first stage from different 2x2 fiber optic couplers of the first stage and outputs two sub-pumped lights of the second stage.Each pumped sub-light of the second stage provides energy to one EDFA module, and the pumped light output by each pumped laser can provide energy to each of the four EDFA modules, which is 25% for each EDFA module, and each EDFA module receives 25% of the pumped laser energy of the four pumped lasers. The first optical fiber coupler and the second optical fiber coupler cross-connect with each other to form a complete closed loop; which has structural symmetry and can theoretically be infinitely extended and can be applied to the communication system for underwater equipment with fiber pairs at any number greater than three.

[0069] In some embodiments, each conventional pumped laser is equipped with a backup pumped laser, as shown in [Fig.4], for example, the underwater equipment 100 adopts protection with a single 2x2 optical fiber pair, that is, after coupling by an optical fiber coupler, the output of two conventional pump lasers is supplied to two single optical fiber pair optical amplifier units respectively at a ratio of 50%:50%, and the conventional pumped lasers and the backup pumped lasers are optically coupled using a polarization combiner or an optical switch.

[0070] By equipping conventional pumped lasers with all 100 underwater equipment in the entire line of backup pumped lasers, the performance adjustment space and granularity of the entire underwater equipment communication system are improved.

[0071] In some embodiments, the optical element 130 is a polarization combiner or an optical switch. The backup pumped laser 102 as well as the conventional pumped laser 101 may be optically coupled using the combiner polarization (PBC), and the backup pumped laser 102 and the conventional pumped laser 101 can be controlled using the optical switch.

[0072] The backup pumped laser 102 and the conventional pumped laser 101 are coupled using a polarization combiner or strobed using the optical switch, the backup pumped laser 102 is normally in a stop state, when it is necessary to start the backup pumped laser 102, the conventional pumped laser 101 and the backup pumped laser 102 work together so that the pump output power meets the output requirements.

[0073] In some embodiments, the backup pumped laser 102 may be a pumped laser having the same output power and reliability level as the normally operating conventional pumped laser 101. Selecting an element of the same model as the in-line working pump allows for equivalent replacement in pump failure scenarios.

[0074] Since the backup pumped laser 102 is only used to compensate for the reduction in pump power due to aging, in some embodiments, the backup pumped laser 102 may also be a pumped laser having the same reliability level as the conventional pumped laser 101 operating normally and a lower output power, and the model corresponding to a lower output power than the conventional pumped laser operating normally online will be selected to reduce costs.

[0075] Since the backup pumped laser 102 is started only in the middle and end of the system life, the cumulative working time is not long and the requirements on reliability are not strict. In some embodiments, the backup pumped laser 102 may also be a pumped laser having a lower reliability level than the conventional pumped laser 101 operating normally, for example, terrestrial cable-grade pumps which are not used for submarine cable repeaters in order to reduce costs. In addition, since the element failure is a probabilistic event, the possibility of failure for some elements can be compensated for probably by equipping several elements with ordinary reliability level.

[0076] It should be noted that if the working current of the pumped laser is too large, the probability of failure of the pumped laser will be increased, for this, it is necessary to control the driving current of the backup pumped laser 102. In some embodiments, a part of the backup pumped lasers 102 of the underwater equipment 100 may be started according to the theoretical analysis or the actually measured results on the best performance point of the whole underwater cable communication system, in which the working current of each backup pumped laser 102 is kept constant.

[0077] In a portion of the embodiments, the drive current of the backup pumped laser 102 may be adjusted based on the theoretical analysis or the actually measured results on the best performance point of the entire submarine cable communication system, so that the submarine equipment 100 operates in the best performance state.

[0078] It should be noted that the underwater equipment 100 in the embodiments of the present application may be an optical repeater (RPT) or other equipment, during long-distance communication transmission, signals will be lost in the cables, therefore, the optical RPT having the signal relay amplification function must be arranged in the underwater cables at a certain interval, for example, 50 km, 70 km and 100 km to realize long-distance transmission of the signals. When setting up an underwater communication system, the underwater equipment 100 is generally arranged directly on the cable and wound on the cable to be lowered into the water with the cable.

[0079] A backup pumped laser 102 is additionally provided to the optical repeater to compensate for the reduction in the output power of the conventional pumped laser due to aging, and by improving the aging of the pumped lasers, the output power of the optical repeater meets the working requirements, and the noise coefficient of the optical repeater is kept stable and the transmission performance is kept stable.

[0080] As shown in [Fig.5], in some embodiments of the present application, a communication system for underwater equipment is provided, which comprises the underwater equipment 100 according to the above embodiments, and the communication system for underwater equipment further comprises:

[0081] - a first station 200, which is used to transmit a first optical signal of data to the underwater equipment 100 through the first optical fiber 110;

[0082] - a second station 300, which is used to transmit a second optical signal data to the underwater equipment 100 through the second optical fiber 120;

[0083] - the underwater equipment 100 is used for, once received the first signal optical data signal, amplify the first received optical data signal and transfer it to the second station 300, and for, once the second optical data signal is received, amplify the second received optical data signal and transfer it to the first station 200.

[0084] In some embodiments, the first station 200 is also used to transmit a first optical detection signal to the underwater equipment 100 through the first optical fiber 110, the underwater equipment 100 receives a first optical signal reflected from the optical fiber coupler 140, sends the first signal reflected optical signal toward the direction of the first station, and the first reflected optical signal is obtained by Rayleigh backscattering from the amplified detection optical signal; and the first station 200 is also used for receiving the first reflected optical signal and judging whether failure or aging of the conventional pumped laser 101 occurs according to the first reflected optical signal.

[0085] It should be noted that the optical amplification unit has the characteristic of output saturation effect, when the input optical power of the amplifier reaches a threshold value, the input optical power increases or decreases within a certain range, the output optical power will remain essentially unchanged, the corresponding amplifier gain will decrease or increase by an amount essentially equal to that of the change of input optical power, and possible failure or aging of the conventional pumped laser can be judged according to the change amount of the scattered light power of the optical repeater, so as to start the backup pumped laser in time to compensate for the reduction of the output power of the conventional pumped laser due to aging.

[0086] It is apparent from the above technical solutions that, in some embodiments of the present application, underwater equipment and a communication system are provided. The underwater equipment comprises a first optical fiber, a second optical fiber, a conventional pumped laser, and at least one backup pumped laser. The conventional pumped laser is used for supplying the pumped light to a first optical amplification unit located at the first optical fiber and a second optical amplification unit located at the second optical fiber; an input port of an optical element of the first optical fiber and / or the second optical fiber is connected to the conventional pumped laser and the backup pumped laser respectively, wherein the optical element is used for optically coupling to the conventional pumped laser and the backup pumped laser.The backup pumped laser is used to compensate the output power when the output power of the conventional pumped laser is lower than a target output power, wherein the compensated output power is the lost output power of the conventional pumped laser in an aging state. The backup pumped laser is configured to be in a shutdown state before receiving a first instruction, and to start operating and emitting the pumped light after receiving the first instruction, wherein the first instruction is a control instruction issued when the output power of the conventional pumped laser is lower than the target output power.In the present application, providing at least one backup pumped laser in the underwater equipment makes it possible to compensate for the pump output power of the underwater equipment by starting the backup pumped laser when the conventional pumped laser ages, thereby extending the communication lifetime. by underwater optical fibers.

[0087] Similar parts of the embodiments of the present application may be referenced to each other, and the above embodiments are only a few examples within the general spirit of the present application and do not constitute a limitation of the scope of protection of the present application. For those skilled in the art, all embodiments according to the present application without creative work should be included within the scope of protection of the present application.

Claims

Claims

1. Underwater equipment (100), characterized in that, the underwater equipment (100) comprises a first optical fiber (110), a second optical fiber (120), a conventional pumped laser (101) and at least one backup pumped laser (102); - the conventional pumped laser (101) is used to provide the pumped light to a first optical amplification unit (150) located at the first optical fiber (110) and to a second optical amplification unit (160) located at the second optical fiber (120); - an input port of an optical element (130) of the first optical fiber (110) and / or the second optical fiber (120) is connected to the conventional pumped laser (101) and the backup pumped laser (102) respectively, wherein the optical element (130) is used to perform optical coupling to the conventional pumped laser (101) and to the backup pumped laser (102);- the backup pumped laser (102) is used to compensate the output power when the output power of the conventional pumped laser (101) is lower than a target output power, wherein the compensated output power is the lost output power of the conventional pumped laser (101) in an aging state; - the backup pumped laser (102) is configured to be in a shutdown state before receiving a first instruction, and to start operating and emitting the pumped light after receiving the first instruction, wherein the first instruction is a control instruction issued when the output power of the conventional pumped laser (101) is lower than the target output power.;

2. The underwater equipment (100) of claim 1, characterized in that the backup pumped laser (102) is configured to be in a shutdown state before receiving a second instruction, and to start operating and emitting the pumped light after the second instruction is received, wherein the second instruction is a control instruction issued when an aging value of the underwater equipment (100) is greater than a threshold value.

3. Underwater equipment (100) according to claim 2, characterized in that, the conventional pumped laser (101) comprises a first pumped laser and a second pumped laser connected to the backup pumped laser (102); - an input port of a first optical fiber coupler (140) of the first optical fiber (110) is connected to the first pumped laser; and an output port of the first optical fiber coupler (140) of the first optical fiber (110) is connected to the first optical amplification unit (150); - the input port of the optical element (130) of the second optical fiber (120) is connected to the second pumped laser and the backup pumped laser (102) respectively; and an output port of the optical element (130) of the second optical fiber (120) is connected to the second optical amplification unit (160); - the first pumped laser is used to supply the pumped light to the first optical amplification unit (150) located at the first optical fiber (110) and the second pumped laser is used to supply the pumped light to the second optical amplification unit (160) located at the second optical fiber (120).

4. Underwater equipment (100) according to claim 3, characterized in that, the underwater equipment (100) comprises at least two first pumped lasers and two second pumped lasers, each of the first pumped lasers provides 50% of the energy to the first optical amplification unit (150), and each of the second pumped lasers provides 50% of the energy to the second optical amplification unit (160); - or the underwater equipment (100) comprises at least four first pumped lasers and four second pumped lasers, each of the first pumped lasers provides 25% of the energy to the first optical amplification unit (150), and each of the second pumped lasers provides 25% of the energy to the second optical amplification unit (160).

5. Underwater equipment (100) according to claim 4, characterized in that only one of the second pumped lasers of the underwater equipment (100) is connected to the backup pumped laser (102).

6. Underwater equipment (100) according to claim 3, characterized in that the first optical fiber (110) and the second optical fiber (120) belong to the same pair of optical fibers, or the first optical fiber (110) and the second optical fiber (120) belong to different pairs of optical fibers.

7. Underwater equipment (100) according to any one of claims 1 to 6, characterized in that the optical element (130) is a polarization combiner or an optical switch.

8. Underwater equipment (100) according to claim 2, characterized in that each conventional pumped laser (101) is equipped with a backup pumped laser (102), and the conventional pumped laser (101) and the backup pumped laser (102) can be coupled using the polarization combiner or the optical switch.

9. Underwater equipment (100) according to any one of claims 1 to 6, characterized in that the underwater equipment (100) is an optical repeater.

10. A communication system for underwater equipment (100), characterized in that the communication system for underwater equipment (100) comprises the underwater equipment (100) according to any one of claims 1 to 9 and further comprises: - a first station (200), which is used for transmitting a first optical data signal to the underwater equipment (100) through the first optical fiber (110); - a second station (300), which is used for transmitting a second optical data signal to the underwater equipment (100) through the second optical fiber (120); - the underwater equipment (100) is used to, after the first optical data signal is received, amplify the received first optical data signal and transfer it to the second station (300), and to, after the second optical data signal is received, amplify the received second optical data signal and transfer it to the first station (200).

Images