Undersea Cable Research Articles

Study of Overvoltage Protection and Insulation Coordination for MMC Based HVDC

This paper focus on overvoltage protection and insulation coordination in Modular Multilevel Converter based HVDC system planning. An overvoltage protection scheme, which bases on the topology used inTransbay project by Siemens, is proposed in this paper. Thescheme draws fromthe characteristics of MMC-HVDC systems and the research results in classic HVDC systems, byplacing arresters at some key locations in the MMC-HVDC converter station.With this scheme, the overvoltage at those key pointscan be limitedto an acceptable range and hence protect the key equipment concerned. Since all the DC lines of the project are undersea cables, no lighting overvoltage is considered and 14 faults which could happen are carefully selected to serve as the verification conditions for the insulation design. Based on the PSCAD/EMTDC simulations and the deterministic method, the specified withstand voltage levels of the critical equipment in the converter station is calculated.

Two-Dimensional Dynamic Analysis of an Ocean Umbilical Cable Using the Geometrically Exact Beam Elements

We present an idea for modeling flexible ocean umbilical cable using a nonlinear finite element method. The umbilical cable is assembled by Reissners geometrically exact beam elements, which take account of the geometric nonlinearities of large rotation and displacement, and effects of axial load and bending stiffness for modeling of slack cables. The linearization and discretization of the entire weak form for the umbilical cable system are proposed. The resulting semi-discrete motion equations are solved by the Newmark method. The capability of considering the action of horizontal ocean current is a key feature of this analysis. An example about the two-dimensional dynamic behavior of the umbilical cable system in depth-dependent ocean current with sinusoidal ship motion is presented.

Outsourcing and Vision 2030: An analysis into Kenyas new economic frontier

Vision 2030 is Kenya’s new blue print that aims at transforming the country into a middle income country by the year 2030. One of the identified sectors that will catalyst the achievement of Vision 2030 is Business Process Offshoring (BPO). Thousands of jobs are expected to be created in this sector whose strength is expected to come from a well trained manpower, Information Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure and supportive Government policy. The arrival of EASSY, TEAMS and SEACOM undersea cables are seen as the first step in starting off this sector. This papers analyzes the state of Kenya’s readiness for BPO and makes bold recommendations on transforming Kenya into an outsourcing hub which can compete favorably with other hubs such as India and Philippines. The paper further analyses on how BPO can be scaled up to include high value jobs such as in R and D, beyond the back office. The operational issues arising from BPO are also addressed. Key words: Business process off shoring, outsourcing, Information Communication Technology (ICT).

INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH AT THE EASTERN TELEGRAPH COMPANY, 1872-1929.

By the late nineteenth century the submarine telegraph cable industry, which had blossomed in the 1850s, had reached what historians regard as technological maturity. For a host of commercial, cultural and technical reasons, the industry seems to have become conservative in its attitude towards technological development, which is reflected in the small scale of its staff and facilities for research and development. This paper argues that the attitude of the cable industry towards research and development was less conservative and altogether more complex than historians have suggested. Focusing on the crucial case of the Eastern Telegraph Company, the largest single operator of submarine cables, it shows how the company encouraged inventive activity among outside and in-house electricians and, in 1903, established a small research laboratory where staff and outside scientific advisors pursued new methods of cable signalling and cable designs. The scale of research and development at the Eastern Telegraph Company, however, was small by comparison to that of its nearest competitor, Western Union, and dwarfed by that of large electrical manufacturers. This paper explores the reasons for this comparatively weak provision but also suggests that this was not inappropriate for a service-sector firm.

Measurement in French Experimental Physics from Regnault to Lippmann. Rhetoric and Theoretical Practice

Summary This paper explores the legacy of the great French experimental physicist Victor Regnault through the example of Gabriel Lippmann, whose engagement with electrical standardization during the early 1880s was guided by Regnault's methodological precept to measure ‘directly’. Lippmann's education reveals that the theoretical practice of ‘direct’ measurement entailed eliminating extraneous physical effects through the experimental design, rather than, like physicists in Britain and Germany, making numerical ‘corrections’ to measured values. It also provides, paradoxically, exemplars of the qualitative theoretical practices that sustained Regnault's misguided ambition to avoid theory. By considering the largely negative reactions to Lippmann's proposals for selecting suitable electrical units and methods of measuring the ohm, this paper associates these theoretical practices with the ineffectual rhetorical strategies employed by Lippmann to promote his work, and thereby indicates that the practice of direct measurement was limited to French experimental physics. Whilst this result aligns readily with the existence of divergent nineteenth century British and German cultures of precision, it emerges from a very different disciplinary context in which the practice of precision electrical measurement developed independently of submarine telegraphy. This is because, as this paper illustrates, telegraphic engineering and experimental physics remained separate professions in France.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS AGENCIES, NEWS-FLOW, AND THE USA–AUSTRALIA RELATIONSHIP FROM THE 1920S TILL THE END OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR

Prior to the Second World War, news-flow between the US and Australia was constrained by the lack of a direct submarine cable or wireless telegraphy link between the two countries and by the fact that Australian coverage of international news largely emerged out of an ‘imperial press system’ centred in London. ‘Imperial preference’ in news was facilitated by global cartel arrangements amongst international news agencies whereby the London-based agency, Reuters, was given priority access to the Australian news market. This article examines these constraints on the development of US-Australian news links prior to the Second World War. It also looks at the way the Second World War transformed the situation as the strategic interests of the two countries became aligned. The article demonstrates the importance of news agencies and news-flow in the history of international relations.

SUBMARINE TELEGRAPHS, TELEGRAPH NEWS, AND THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS OF 1873

The development of submarine telegraph systems and telegraph news – the global media of their time – in the late-nineteenth century deserve study for many reasons, not least because they were front and centre in the global financial crisis of 1873 and fit the criteria used to define speculative bubbles remarkably well. The sharp leap in the amount of capital investment and the boom in submarine telegraph construction from 1869 to 1875 are two indicators of this. The sharp rise in the share prices of submarine cable firms and their sky-high capitalization levels are others. Newspaper coverage of the industry also seemed to rise and fall in lock-step fashion with the fortunes of the industry. Ultimately, the main point of this paper is that the media's relationship to financial crises deserves far more scholarly attention than it has so far received.

Techno-Science and the State in the Japanese Empire: Yang Daqing, Technology of Empire Janis Mimura, Planning for Empire

Techno-Science and the State in the Japanese EmpireYang Daqing, Technology of Empire Janis Mimura, Planning for Empire Togo Tsukahara (bio) It is a pleasant surprise to find two serious English-language scholarly works on Japan’s period of empire-building and the Japanese state’s use, appropriation, and management of technology. Together, these works suggest that the Japanese attempt at expansion and empire-building in the twentieth century and the conceptualization of its claim to the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” should be characterized by its application of techno-science and not simply attributed to nationalism and fascism. The Japanese political management of a combined science and technology was in many senses remarkable, and it holds great interest as the first non-Western case of the appropriation and globalization of modern Western science and technology. Yet it has been underexamined; except for a few English-language works, such as Mizuno Hiromi’s Science for the Empire: Scientific Nationalism in Modern Japan (2009), most studies of techno-science and empire in Japan have been limited to Japanese academia or to Chinese, mainly from Liang Bo and his group. Yang Daqing’s Technology of Empire: Telecommunications and Japanese Expansion in Asia, 1883–1945 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, Harvard East Asian Monograph 219, 2011. Pp. 468. $49.95) is a straightforward history of telecommunications in Japan: well-documented, descriptive, and thorough. This is an impressive work, starting from Japan’s first contact with Western communications technology on the occasion of its forced encounter with American gunboat diplomacy, and ending with [End Page 461] Hirohito’s radio broadcast. Those points are marked to signify the beginning and the end of a distinctive period in Japanese telecommunications, both coerced by the Americans. Chronologically ordered and encyclopedic, this book surely will be a standard in the field. One should note, however, that the subtitle is somewhat misleading. This is not really a book covering Japanese imperialism and communications from 1883 onward; it is much more concentrated on 1930–45, with the earlier story being more of a backdrop. Part 1 discusses the “Genesis” of Japanese telecommunications in the period 1853–1931, when Japan was an emerging empire in the age of submarine telegraphy; it also covers the subsequent technology of wireless. The author pays attention to Japan’s so-called informal empire, the building of its telecommunications network, and that network’s function as a tool of control. Part 2 deals with “Technology,” covering the period after Japan’s commitment to China in the period between 1931 and 1940. Yang states that telecommunications were oriented toward a new order on the continent, and he analyzes new Japanese communication technologies in connection to the way Japanese bureaucrats and engineers envisioned imperial integration. Part 3 discusses “Control” in the more intensified war effort, during 1936 to 1945. How did Japan negotiate and establish control at home, and consolidate media and telecommunications control in China? It also further describes how Japan gained control in Southeast Asia. Finally, part 4 explains the final stage of Japan’s telecommunications from the viewpoint of “Network” in 1939–45: how systematic integration into the disastrous total war was organized and disrupted, up to its final operation and meltdown. In this part, the aftermath of the whole story is briefly discussed. This is the first full-scale book on this topic in English, but it is not clear what is new to Japanese and Chinese historians of technology already familiar with this history. In part, this is because it is much more descriptive than theoretical. I understand that the author needed to explain what is what to English readers, but I, for one, would have liked to see a sharper theoretical edge. The descriptive approach, however, surely has laid a firm foundation for further analysis. There is also an editorial issue of some significance: there are too many mistakes in Japanese. To name just a few notable ones in the earliest part: Hirohito’s radio broadcasting of Japan’s defeat is “Gyoku On Hoso,” not “Gyo’on Hoso” (p. 2), and the standard resource work edited by the Japanese Society of History of Science is Nihon Kagaku Gijutsu Shi...

Warning: Do Not Dig’: Negotiating the Visibility of Critical Infrastructures

This article highlights the visual traces of undersea cables, technologies that carry the majority of transoceanic telecommunications traffic, in order to make visible the material systems that support an ‘immaterial’ internet. The author documents the cultural production of these traces, recording how infrastructural visibility must be negotiated at points where cables cross through public spaces, including beaches, highways, and state parks. By examining the cultural conflicts over cables in California and O‘ahu, the article shows how telecommunications companies reorganize visual space to protect the cable, using diverse media such as nautical charts and warning signs. The cultural specificity of these representations testifies to the ways in which global cable systems develop in relation to local spatial politics. The article seeks to broaden research on infrastructure’s invisibility, disruption, and sensationalization to include the ‘existing visibilities’ of undersea cables as they are constituted in everyday life and material environments.

A Short Note on Corruption in Telecommunications in Kenya

Liberia endured military warlords, dictatorships and civil war, before entering a period of post-conflict transition and successful elections. It continues to have significant problems with corruption.Despite these problems, mobile network operators have been able to develop their networks and businesses, covering much of the country and now connected to an undersea cable. However, the first mobile licence was granted to cronies of Charles Taylor, warlord and now war criminal, with serious allegations that he owned part of the company (i.e. rent seeking). Three further licences were granted under obscure circumstances hinting at further corruption. Attempts to revive the state-owned fixed operator saw bribes paid by a manufacturer to supply equipment. The head of the regulatory authority has been found guilty of theft. He had, over a number of years, treated its revenues as his own.

Dr Wildman Whitehouse and his ‘Iron Oscillograph’; Electrical Measurements Relating to the First Transatlantic Cable

Wildman Whitehouse is popularly remembered as the surgeon turned ‘dabbler’ in telegraphy responsible for damaging the first Atlantic telegraph cable in 1858 by use of his high voltage induction coils. He is also known for his disagreement with the electrical theories of William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) and being sacked as electrician to the operator of the transatlantic cable, the Atlantic Telegraph Company. Over the past 150 years commentators have marked him down as insignificant, a loose cannon in the annals of telegraphy, a ‘non-engineer’ and certainly a ‘non-scientist’. This paper, after a brief account of his whole career, looks specifically at Whitehouse’s work associated with submarine telegraph cables prior to the laying of the 1858 Atlantic cable. During this period he was making electrical measurements at the manufacturer’s works and also on long underground cables, in order to try to establish the viability of communications along the proposed 2000-mile transatlantic link.By reappraising historical accounts against primary sources and examining hitherto unresearched artefacts held in museums, the paper endeavours to outline Whitehouse’s approach to measurements of telegraph signal pulses using his magneto-electrometer. This was one of his principal measuring instruments, decried by most historians as heavy-duty and sluggish, yet it would appear to have allowed Whitehouse to make extraordinarily sensitive comparative measurements. The results of such work are illustrated in a contemporary diagram preserved by the Science Museum and perhaps indicate that Whitehouse’s achievements in telegraphy may have been more merit-worthy than previously understood.

A New Generation of Networks and Computing Models for High Energy Physics in the LHC Era

Wide area networks of increasing end-to-end capacity and capability are vital for every phase of high energy physicists' work. Our bandwidth usage, and the typical capacity of the major national backbones and intercontinental links used by our field have progressed by a factor of several hundred times over the past decade. With the opening of the LHC era in 2009-10 and the prospects for discoveries in the upcoming LHC run, the outlook is for a continuation or an acceleration of these trends using next generation networks over the next few years. Responding to the need to rapidly distribute and access datasets of tens to hundreds of terabytes drawn from multi-petabyte data stores, high energy physicists working with network engineers and computer scientists are learning to use long range networks effectively on an increasing scale, and aggregate flows reaching the 100 Gbps range have been observed. The progress of the LHC, and the unprecedented ability of the experiments to produce results rapidly using worldwide distributed data processing and analysis has sparked major, emerging changes in the LHC Computing Models, which are moving from the classic hierarchical model designed a decade ago to more agile peer-to-peer-like models that make more effective use of the resources at Tier2 and Tier3 sites located throughout the world. A new requirements working group has gauged the needs of Tier2 centers, and charged the LHCOPN group that runs the network interconnecting the LHC Tierls with designing a new architecture interconnecting the Tier2s. As seen from the perspective of ICFA's Standing Committee on Inter-regional Connectivity (SCIC), the Digital Divide that separates physicists in several regions of the developing world from those in the developed world remains acute, although many countries have made major advances through the rapid installation of modern network infrastructures. A case in point is Africa, where a new round of undersea cables promises to transform the continent.

Sharing Science: Enabling Global Access to the Scientific Literature

Peer-reviewed literature is the formal channel of communication for the scientific community. Through it, scientists convey their discoveries to one another across distance and time. Providing both a broadcast system and an archive, it is pivotal to the collaborative effort that is modern science. Without access to it, a scientist cannot keep up with develop-ments, has nowhere to contribute findings, and is pretty much out of the loop. One traditional problem of access to the literature faced by researchers and academics in developing countries has been the inability of their institutions to afford journal subscriptions, which can run into the thousands of dollars per publication. But things have been changing, with the last 10 years having seen important efforts to make the world’s peer-reviewed scientific journals available to these members of the research community either free or at a much-reduced price. Top-flight open-access journals have also come into being, theoretically making the papers they contain free for all to use. But is purchase price the only obstacle hindering the entry of the developing world’s researchers into international scientific dialogue?

Energy threat from overpopulation

The mega-scale Desertec project (PHYSICS TODAY, July 2011, page 21) calls for solar energy collection in the Sahara. The solar energy will then be converted to electrical to be carried to Europe on high-voltage transmission lines and undersea cables. A leading proponent of Desertec is quoted as saying that one of the reasons for the project “is exploding population” (PHYSICS TODAY, July 2011, page 22). Serious questions need to be raised about some aspects of the proposal.Instead of addressing “exploding population,” a world-threatening problem, the proposal would accommodate it and thereby guarantee that the population will continue to grow. That will make everything worse.Desertec might work in a peaceful world, but increasing overpopulation is a main driver of our current condition of perpetual war. Tall electrical transmission towers and undersea cables are tempting targets for terrorists. Remember that at the outbreak of World War I almost 100 years ago, one of the first things the British did was to send out naval parties to sever the undersea cables and destroy the relay stations that the Germans used to communicate with their African colonies. German naval raiding parties, meanwhile, were destroying the cables and relay stations the British used to maintain communications with their global empire.We first need to deal successfully with the urgent problems of overpopulation (see my article, “Thoughts on long-term energy supplies: Scientists and the silent lie,” PHYSICS TODAY, July 2004, page 53). Doing so will reduce the pressures for continuing war and increase the chances that Desertec might be a success.© 2011 American Institute of Physics.

Managing IT business risk

AbstractCompanies increasingly depend on their information technology (IT) systems to achieve their business objectives. At the same time, companies are also more concerned about risks that endanger their performance—and can endanger critical IT systems. There are many risks, including global financial crises, earthquakes, political unrest, damaged undersea cables, the loss of critical knowledge as employees leave, and more. So what are the best ways for companies to manage these potentially devastating IT risks? And what are the roles of top management and financial management? © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Geo-politics versus market structure interventions in Europe's infrastructure industries c. 1830–1939

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the natural monopoly features of infrastructure industries, together with their strategic roles, have been important elements in state intervention. The aim of this paper is to evaluate what relative weight was attached to market failure problems on the one hand and geo-political factors on the other. For the period 1830–1939, how far were geo-political factors stronger than natural monopoly problems in accounting for the scale of intervention in the various countries of the Western World? How far did the policy instruments for security and market failure overlap? Whilst most of the infrastructure sectors are covered – including internal telecommunications, coal, gas, shipping, electricity and water – special attention is devoted to international submarine telegraph tables and railways. The paper concludes by demonstrating strong differences between Britain and USA on the one hand and Continental Europe plus Japan on the other.

Building the oceanic concert hall: Multidisciplinary applications of acoustics for ocean observing systems.

Over the past decade, the oceanographic community has been constructing integrated multidisciplinary observational systems to serve the immediate and long‐term needs of the society (www.ioos.gov). The overarching goal is to provide practical products and information to society as a return on its long‐term investment in oceanographic research. Demand is increasing for information about the state of our oceans to address a myriad of issues ranging from climate variability to fisheries management to public education. Customers for ocean observing systems range from government agencies to commercial shipping companies to the science projects of high school students. Two developing “observing systems” in the Pacific Northwest are the Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing Systems (www.nanoos.org) and the Neptune Undersea Cable Network (www.interactiveoceans.washington.edu). The oceans are largely transparent to sound; hence, oceanographic, biological, and signal‐processing acoustic techniques are primary tools for ocean observation and engineering. The opportunities and value of acoustical observations and techniques within these systems are boundless, yet incorporation of these techniques has been opportunistic and ad hoc. Coordination of the acoustical applications is essential. Organizations advocating acoustical observations face enormous challenges of planning, implementation, and data management to bring acoustical tools to fruition for ocean observing systems.

Investigation on transient dynamic behaviors of low-tension undersea cables

This paper presents a numerical analysis of the dynamic transient behaviors of undersea cables. In this numerical study, the governing equations based on Euler-Bernoulli beam theory are adopted, and they can satisfy many applications no matter what the magnitude of the cable tension is. The nonlinear coupled equations are solved by a popular central finite difference method, and the numerical results of transient behaviors are presented when several kinds of surrounding conditions, such as different towing speeds of surface vessel, different currents and waves with various frequencies and amplitudes, are exerted. Then a detailed comparison of the results, including the upper end tension and cable shape in time-domain, is made under the above external excitations, and finally the possible reasons for these are further explained.

Critical Nodes, Cultural Networks: Re-mapping Guam's Cable Infrastructure

Undersea communication cables are durable and cost effective infrastructures supporting the interconnection of America, Asia, and Australia. Many of these cables, which carry almost all transpacific Internet traffic, are routed through the island of Guam. Historically, more cables have landed on Guam than in either Hawai’i or California, two other major hubs for signal exchange. The cartographic representation of undersea cables, however, often abstracts them as mere lines of interconnection, rarely ascribing significance to the geographies they intersect. This representational strategy makes it difficult for viewers to connect cables on the ocean floor to the cultural landscape above them; it implies that information flows effortlessly, without political force or resistance, across the oceans. From this vantage point, the concentration of cables on Guam appears to be an anomaly, a site that should have been bypassed once cables began to extend directly across the Pacific. These images, like the narrative...

Oceans apart: overview of the international law regime for submarine cables

First used in 1851 for carrying telegraphy, submarine cables today carry more than 95% of all intercontinental telecommunications traffic. Due to its utmost importance to contemporary society, submarine cables require a special regime of legal protection at an international level. Most of the damage to cables comes from non-natural causes, especially careless fishing. The first international legal document on this issue was adopted in 1884 – an International Convention for the Protection of Submarine Telegraph Cables, which remains in force. Certain provisions on submarine cables, their laying, maintenance and protection are contained in the Geneva Conventions on the High Seas and the Continental Shelf of 1958 and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982. Nevertheless, this international legislation does not contain detailed provisions and measures on the improvement of the protection mechanism for the cables. Implementation of existing rules of international law depends on adoption and enforcement of appropriate national legislation by states.