Global Positioning System over Fiber for Buoyant Cable Antennas

Buoyont cable antennas (BCAs) are long, towed antennas used by submarines to receive RF signals. Deployed while the submarine is operating at depth, the cable is managed so that the internal antenna element or elements are positioned near the ocean surface. The received signal is sent to the submarine for processing over a transmission line within the cable. In this article, we examine the design of a fiber-optic signal transport link for a BCA that receives signals from the Global Positioning System (GPS). This signal and reception method is of significant interest because the resulting GPS solution can be fused with the submarine's inertial navigation system to improve overall navigation accuracy without requiring the ship to come to periscope depth.