Standard Telephones Cables Public Limited Company

John A Barnett

Roger E Jones

Gilles D Pitt

George R Antell

Lyndon R Spicer

Robert Hill

Power transmission to a remote consuming device, especially for underseas applications including towed arrays, static arrays, submersible links to submersible vehicles, or surveillance devices, links to divers, and dunking sonars, uses on the transmission medium an optical fibre. This fibre has a thickness in the range 150-300 um, i.e. it is of the so-called fat type, and is a long wavelength fibre for conveying light whose wavelength is in the range of 0.7 to 1.7 um. The light source uses lasers or super-luminescent diodes, a preferred light source being an array of individual laser diodes which are pulsed and/or cooled to improve power handling capacity. These diodes each feed optical energy into a short length of optical fibre and these fibres are coupled via an optical coupler into the main transmitting fibre. At the receiving end another optical coupler feeds via individual fibres an array of detectors each of which is preferably a photo-voltaic cell formed of layers of suitable doped indium phosphide and indium gallium arsenide. Each such cell has its own output electrodes and these cells are connectable in series, parallel or series/parallel dependent on the desired output.

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Orpington, United Kingdom

John A Barnett