A multinational energy consortium is developing communications infrastructure for two new maritime projects:
Offshore Hub Alpha: A remote floating substation located 150 km150\text{ km}150 km off the coast. The hub must begin transmitting basic telemetry immediately. Over the next 555 years, this site will be expanded into a massive regional control hub coordinating multiple wind farms, requiring ultra-low latency, high-throughput links to the mainland grid.
Survey Fleet Beta: A fleet of semi-autonomous surface marine vessels that will perform environmental monitoring across various remote oceanic quadrants during a temporary 888-month mission.
Describe appropriate communication solutions for each of these two operations, focusing on the use of satellite communication networks and submarine fibre optic cabling.
In your response, you should:
Explain the physical principles underlying data transmission in both submarine fibre optic cables and satellite communication links.
Suggest and justify your communication solutions for both Offshore Hub Alpha (covering both the immediate phase and the long-term expansion) and Survey Fleet Beta.
22 exam-style questions on AQA A Level Physics Data communication systems (A-level only), covering Principles of communication systems (A-level only), Transmission media (A-level only), Time-division multiplexing (A-level only), and Amplitude (AM) and frequency modulation (FM) techniques (A-level only). Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.