UNDERSEA CABLES

Several cable designs have been formulated with the name of Undersea cables which can be installed in environments below water, either fresh (lakes, rivers, canals, etc.) or salty (sea).

Their main application is the interconnection of two points for long-distance communication, negotiating any natural or artificial geographical feature (rivers, lakes, marshes, ports, seas, etc.), in order to achieve said communication link.

Communication through a fibre optic cable allows the transmission of large bandwidths over extremely long distances and with the advantage of being immune to interference from electric fields.

OPTRAL's Innovation and Product Enineering Department have considered undertaking these types of applications, with our own manufactured products along with the support of an expert company. The result of this collaboration is a cable that can be installed at a depth of more than 500 metres and withstand pressures of more than 50 bars, which guarantees total water-tightness, as proved by the results of the analysis obtained from the Tests, Research, and Services Centre (CEIS) located in Mostoles (Madrid) which has issued certificate number CEL-0859/20-1 dated 13-11-2020 concerning the CFO AL-SWA-PE UNDERSEA 125 kN (ET.94.875) under the CIGRÉ 623 TB recommendation, 2015, “Recommendations for mechanical testing of submarine cables”.

Our experience up to now in applications for submerged cables, focused on cables for depths of up to 100 meters, manufactured with protective elements in the form of steel wires and protected with polyethylene covers. This industrial collaboration allows us to include in the cable an aluminum tube filled with gel over the optical core of up to 96 optical fibres, to give it a greater degree of watertightness and high resistance to pressure, supporting crushing forces up to 10 kN.

In order to achieve greater depth and obtain the same water-tightness guarantees, the cable is being improved with the use of marine-grade absorbent tapes to achieve even greater security blocking out water should the covers suffer fissures as a result of being hooked and dragged by some object, marine animal bites, detachment, or material falling.

 A new development is being taking place by including another build option of an optical core in a stainless-steel tube with up to 96 OF, in bundles of 12 and 24 fibres; we will soon have specifications for this proposal which will have the advantage of being between 4000 meters and 5000 meters long per reel.

These releases will allow us to dive into new possibilities and opportunities, along with the increase of our product catalogue.