SUBMARINE OPTICAL CABLE

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To obtain a submarine optical cable for WDM transmission having a structure extremely small in increase of the transmission loss in a cabling stage. SOLUTION: This optical cable consists of an optical unit which is formed by packing and coating a central supporting body 1 consisting of a steel wire and optical fibers 2 assembled around the supporting body with a resin, tension members 5 which consist of steel wires and are assembled around the optical unit, a copper pipe which is welded and formed around these tension members 5 and a polyethylene layer which is formed by extrusion coating around the copper pipe. The twist direction of the optical fibers 2 and the twist directions of the tension members 5 are reversed. The resin layer described above is preferably composed of two layers; a soft resin on an inner side and a bard resin on an outer side. The optical unit may be constituted by tightly coating the circumference of the resin layer further with a metallic pipe. The central supporting body 1 may be previously coated with the soft resin.