Standard Telephones and Cables Public Limited Company

Standard Telephones Cables Public Limited Company

Lyndon R Spicer

Roger E Jones

Gilles D Pitt

George R Antell

Robert Hill

John A Barnett

A cable (C) is laid in a pipeline (10) by pushing the cable and (C') through a hydraulically variable diaphragm in an inlet tube (11). The end (C') of the cable has collapsible moulded cups (20) attached which can be pushed through the diaphragm and which erect themselves to act as a drag inducing device so that flowed liquid in the pipeline can be used to pull the cable and (C') towards an exit tube (12) downstream. A cable pusher (13) pushes the cable through the inlet (11). The cable has a specific gravity less than the liquid, preferably 0.7, which is substantially pressure independent.

Laying cables

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.

Method and arrangement for transmitting power in optical form over

A cable comprises a central electrically insulating composite string, including a relatively hard strength member filament (8) with a relatively soft layer (9) thereon. Four, in the case of a quad, electrical or optical conductors (10) are at least partially embedded in the softer layer (9) and may abut the filament (8). A polyethylene sheath (11) is extruded over the string. The quad may be made by pressing the conductors against the outer periphery of the string whereby to deform it without heating it, and may involve the use of a die arrangement (FIGS. 3 and 4) which ensures the desired spacing and configuration of the conductors relative to one another, necessary for high quality quads of electrical conductors in order to have low crosstalk, is obtained. The cable construction, which facilitates miniature quad manufacture, is such that cable can be manufactured with a minimum of process stages at high throughput speeds.

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Newport, United Kingdom

Lyndon R Spicer