An underwater oceanographic laboratory situated near a hydrothermal vent field on the ocean floor is to be connected to a mainland marine institute via a 20 km submarine communication link. This link must transmit real-time telemetry from high-power undersea drilling equipment, continuous high-definition 4K video feeds from marine cameras, and highly classified ocean-defense research data.
The project engineering team is deciding between installing a heavy-duty armored copper coaxial cable system or a marine-grade single-mode optical fiber system.
Compare the advantages and disadvantages of these two options for this specific underwater application, and make a clear recommendation for which system should be deployed.
In your comparison, you must address:
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.