Feasibility study on power feeding system for scientific cable network ARENA

Power feeding system is the most challenging technical issue to realize a mesh-like underwater cable network for scientific use. IEEE OES (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Oceanic Engineering Society) Japan Chapter organized a committee on the underwater cable-network for scientific seafloor monitoring, and conducted a technical feasibility study. In this paper, outline of the proposed power feeding system will be presented. In the feasibility study, three systems were proposed and compared, namely, (a) constant current (CC) power feeding system, (b) constant voltage (CV) power feeding system, and (c) hybrid system that consists of constant voltage feeding subsystem and constant current feeding subsystem. As a result of the feasibility study, the authors think the CC power feeding system is the most promising system for the proposed scientific cable network. The authors also proposed a new current-to-current converter that is the key devise for the CC power feeding system.