Sensing with submarine optical cables

In this paper, we establish the theoretical framework for understanding the sensing capabilities of megameter-long submarine optical cables. We show the distinct advantage of polarization over phase in detecting sub-hertz environmental processes. Subsequently, we propose a scheme capable of extracting the spectrum of perturbations affecting a specific section at any position along an optical fiber by detecting the state of polarization of the backreflected light. We discuss two examples of earthquake detection and the detection of sea swells and ocean tides through the analysis of the state of polarization of an optical signal reconstructed by the receiver of a transoceanic cable, obtained from an online database [Z. Zhan, “Curie Data - Zhan et al. (2021)” (2020)]. Finally, we provide the analytical expression for the cross correlation of the polarization perturbations of two wavelength division multiplexed channels and show that the analysis of the polarization correlations between adjacent channels can provide valuable insights into the localization of earthquakes.