Network infrastructure

<<click on image to enlarge>>

Overview

Periods of remarkable scientific discovery are often tied directly to breakthroughs in technology. The invention of the microscope led to amazing revolutions in microbiology and human physiology, the construction of the Hubble Space telescope had a profound impact on basic theories of astronomy and cosmology. And now, building on innovations in cabled communications systems and data processing NEPTUNE Canada will be our window into the dynamic ocean and earth systems.

NEPTUNE Canada is the first of a new generation of cabled ocean observatories.  Previous observatories have either been near-shore, single node observatories, such as LEO-15, VENUS Saanich and Bonne Bay, or networks aimed primarily at single instrument types such as the JAMSTEC seismic observatories off Japan.  NEPTUNE Canada will be the first observatory which has sufficient reach, power, and data capacity to really transform how ocean science is done.

Construction of NEPTUNE Canada, Stage 1 of the NEPTUNE observatory, is being led by UVic, with funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the British Columbia Knowledge Development Fund.  Stage 1 will consist of an 800 km ring of fibre optic cable, supporting instruments in five locations: the Endeavour Ridge, with its unique life forms and hot vents; the upper reaches of Barkley Canyon, with its outcrops of gas hydrates; the two existing Ocean Drilling Program Sites - ODP 889 and ODP 1027, where holes extend deep below the seafloor; and the shallow water rock fish sanctuary in Folger Passage near Bamfield, with its rock pinnacles and abundant marine life.  A sixth site, Middle Valley, will be instrumented as funds permit.

The NEPTUNE observatory, a partnership between UVic and National Science Foundation of the US, will eventually cover the entire Juan de Fuca tectonic plate with interactive laboratories supporting instruments sampling the ocean bottom substrate, the ocean floor, and up through the water column. Remote and autonomous undersea vehicles will conduct sampling forays, controlled by an onshore operator, from docking stations along the network. Video and images will be captured by high-resolution cameras and sent back to the operations and data management centre via high bandwidth fibre-optic cable, the same cable that provides power and communication to the instruments and vehicles.  The US part of the observatory, Stage 2, is scheduled for installation in 2013.

UVic has purchased the cable station for an out of service trans-pacific telecommunications system in Port Alberni. Both ends of the Stage 1 loop will be terminated in this building, and data will be transmitted from there to UVic via a dedicated 10Gb/sec optical wavelength on an existing fibre optic telephone cable.

In October 2005, UVic signed a contract with Alcatel Submarine Networks of Paris, France (now part of Alcatel-Lucent) to design, build and install the NEPTUNE Canada network infrastructure, from the terminal equipment in the shore station at Port Alberni to the nodes on the seabed.  With over 150 years of experience in the submarine business, Alcatel-Lucent leads the industry in terms of capacity - with up to 10 Tbit/s using the latest dense wavelength-division multiplexing technology, and installed systems - with over 461,500 km of submarine networks, enough to circle the globe at the Equator 11 times.

Alcatel-Lucentis adapting its standard submarine telecommunications equipment for the unique requirements of the NEPTUNE Canada cabled observatory.

Stage I System characteristics

The essential elements of NEPTUNE Stage 1 are:

• Ring of optical fibre cables and seafloor nodes (power; two way high-speed communication)
• Instrument arrays on the seafloor and in the water column at the Barkley Canyon and Endeavour sites
• Plug-in expansion capability at the ODP 889 and ODP 1027 sites
• Shore Station in Port Alberni to support the subsea equipment and to buffer incoming data
• Archive and Operations Centre at UVic to monitor and control all sub-sea and shore elements and for data management and distribution (for user interface and long-term access)

[top]

Key characteristics of the NEPTUNE Stage I network infrastructure are:

• Lots of power (100 kW for the system, 10kW per node)
• Bandwidth (2 Gbits/sec protected bandwidth per node)
• Real-time data return and control
• Robust design; high reliability
• Available for 20-30 years

• Backbone system with branch units and a hierarchy of junction boxes
• Power
• Parallel architecture: D.C. network, multiple shore landings
• Circuit breakers in each branching unitl to isolate cable faults
• 10 kW at each node, 100 kW total
• Communications
• Fibre-optic: 1 Gbits/s Ethernet streams using COTS routers/ switches
• Fully optical transmission from node to shore
• Bi-directional: data, commands,
• NTP and precise timing
• Each sensor addressable IP

Sampling instruments and undersea vehicles

The instrumental array of the NEPTUNE network will evolve over the course of the project, and its design will be such that new instruments can be incorporated easily with a “plug and play” interface. Sampling instruments for studying below the seafloor, the seafloor, and the entire water column include:

• Temperature meters
• Conductivity meters
• Pressure gauges
• Acoustic dopplers and hydrophones
• Current meters
• Wave sensors
• Electrometers
• Seismometers
• Lights, cameras and video recorders
• Nutrient monitors
• Sample storage containers
• AUV’s (Autonomous Underwater Vehicles) with many of the above sensors
• ROV’s (Remotely Operated Vehicles) with many of the above sensors

Data managing and archiving system                                                                                [top]

Cabled observatory test beds

VENUS (the Victoria Experimental Network Under the Sea) and MARS (the Monterey Accelerated Research System) are two smaller near-shore observatories that grew from the NEPTUNE concept. VENUS (Canada) and MARS (U.S.) will be used as proof-of-concept sites for cabled observatories, to test the technology and allow scientist to develop experiments that could eventually be deployed on NEPTUNE. VENUS is funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation; MARS by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

[top]