VENUS project overview: multi-disciplinary geophysical measurements at ocean bottom using demission submarine cables

Abstract

The VENUS project reuses the TPC-2, which is one of the demission submarine coaxial-cable systems, for multi-disciplinary real-time measurements at deep-sea. The VENUS system is comprised of sensors, a junction box, a data-coupling unit, a data-telemetry unit, main coaxial-cables, a shore station, sea-Earth, and a data center. Several new technologies in data communication and deployment of instruments are adopted. There are seven sensor sets, including broadband seismometers, a hydrophone array, etc. By using a submersible, instruments can be connected to junction box through ROV connectors. The power unit is specially designed to keep a constant current due to the constrain by the cable system. The whole system was successfully tested twice in laboratory in 1997. The data obtained by the first station are going to be transmitted to the data center through the shore station. Digital telemetry through the old analog telephone system can provide high accuracy real-time data acquisition.