Features

Cabling Infrastructure

Fiber keeps scientists connected

South Pole environment provides stern test for research site’s cabling infrastructure.

by Betsy Ziobron

The South Pole is a valuable research site, and the new Amundsen-Scott Station is uniquely designed to accommodate scientific experiments and ensure communication. Source: National Science Foundation

For harsh environments, nothing compares to the South Pole–a mean annual temperature of minus 56° F, constant winds creating snowdrifts high enough to bury a building, accumulating snow that never melts, and an almost two-mile deep glacier that slides 33 feet toward the sea each year.

Despite this environment, the South Pole is the site of the new $153 million Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, designed to support an array of scientific investigations. This 65,000-square-foot facility delivers a level of comfort and safety that would have been inconceivable to the explorers who reached the Pole nearly a century ago–for whom the new station is named.

 
To withstand the harsh Antarctic conditions, the new Amundsen-Scott Station is elevated on 36 hydraulic jack columns that can be raised in 10-inch increments. Its airfoil shape forces the wind to travel faster beneath the facility and scour out built-up snow. Source: National Science Foundation

The station is home to 150 people during Antarctica’s three-month austral summer and 50 people (known as "winter-overs") during the remaining nine months when travel is prohibited. Maintaining a connection to the outside world is critical for sending vital scientific data, enabling communication, and easing the daily life of those who live and work on "The Ice." The advanced network cabling infrastructure that delivers fiber to the desk plays a primary role in that effort.

Under the Antarctic Treaty, no nation owns the continent, and it is reserved as a zone for the peaceful conduct of research. The United States Antarctic Program (USAP), funded and managed by the National Science Foundation (NSF), oversees U.S. scientific interest in the area.

 
Bob Croke of Raytheon Polar Services led the engineering team responsible for designing and implementing the network cabling infrastructure for the new Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.

The original 1956 South Pole station long vanished under 30 feet of ice and was replaced in 1975 with a 50-meter geodesic dome. The dome was covered with snow each winter, causing it to show signs of fatigue and no longer be adequate for the growing population of scientists and personnel.

The new station took many years of planning and design to meet the long-range requirements, withstand the harsh conditions and gain government approval and funding. The completed station is the main facility on a campus that also includes a new power plant, supply areas, storage, research observatories, telescopes, satellite communications facility, airplane skiway and a summer camp to house an additional 80 people.

To withstand the harsh Antarctic conditions, the station is elevated on 36 hydraulic jack columns that can be raised in 10-inch increments. Its airfoil shape forces the wind to travel faster beneath the facility and scour out built-up snow. The station was built with flexible connecting walkways to accommodate the sliding of the glacier, which also requires the marker for the true geographic South Pole to be moved annually.

 
The two-story facility is shaped with four “fingers” that house berthing quarters, a gym, dining areas, a medical center, computer room, science laboratories, activity rooms, and space for operations and administration. Source: National Science Foundation
Click here for full view of diagram.

Unlike the dome, the station is designed to provide lighting, heating, ventilation and fire protection in accordance with the latest U.S. building and safety codes. The structure is insulated five times the average U.S. residence and was designed so that all components could be shipped via ski-equipped aircraft. The 12-year construction effort required 925 flights carrying a total of 24 million pounds of cargo.

"The early cabling design for the station was set up to deliver as high of bandwidth as possible to the workstation, which is typical for an advanced scientific lab environment," says Bob Croke, telecommunications engineer at Raytheon Polar Services, which handled the cabling installation. "The scientists are sending multiple gigabytes of data every day off the station. All of the core switches are connected by a redundant singlemode fiber backbone, which connects to a satellite earth station for transmitting data back to the U.S."

One core switch is located in the new main station, along with access switches in each of the four telecommunications rooms located on the first floor. A second core switch is located in the new power plant, which is connected to the station by an underground pathway.

 
The new Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station replaced the 50-meter geodesic dome, which was covered with snow each winter and no longer adequate for the growing population of scientists and personnel. Source: National Science Foundation

The horizontal cabling throughout the station includes copper for data, a voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) phone system and some analog phones. The horizontal cabling also includes both multimode and singlemode fiber for various workstation outlets. A standard workstation outlet in each of the 154 berthing rooms includes two copper cables and two multimode fiber pairs, while standard science workstations include three copper cables, two multimode fiber pairs and one singlemode fiber pair.

The 551 multimode horizontal fiber connections and 155 singlemode horizontal fiber connections are terminated using AMP NETCONNECT MT-RJ fiber-optic connectors. The no-epoxy, no-polish, and no-crimp MT-RJ connectors are half the size of SC duplex and ST-style connectors, feature two fibers in one ferrule, and can be reterminated.

 
The station was designed so that all components could be shipped via ski-equipped aircraft, requiring 925 flights carrying a total of 24 million pounds of cargo throughout the 12-year construction effort. Source: National Science Foundation

In the closet, horizontal fiber is terminated to MT-RJs loaded into AMP NETCONNECT 24-port fiber-optic rackmount patch enclosures. At workstations, the copper and fiber jacks are housed in AMP NETCONNECT Hideaway double-gang multimedia outlets that house up to four front-loading copper jacks and four MT-RJ bottom- or top-fed fiber jacks.

"At science workstations, the singlemode and multimode fiber ports are being used in some cases, depending on scientists’ particular data requirements," says Croke. "The multimode fiber ports in the berthing rooms are not currently in use, but are available for future high-bandwidth services."

"Most of the horizontal cabling in the DSL use wall-mounted raceways," says Croke. "Each raceway typically includes three copper cables, one four-strand multimode fiber cable, and one two-strand singlemode cable."

The wall-mounted raceway in the DSL is the AMP NETCONNECT 1.5-inch surface-mount raceway latching duct that features a flexible hinge that can be opened and closed repeatedly without cracking. The raceway delivers fiber into an AMP NETCONNECT six-port universal office box where it is terminated to MT-RJ fiber jacks.

To replicate the outside storage conditions at the South Pole, the connectors were put through a cold temperature test that involved placing the connectors in a test chamber at -112° F (-80°C) for 137 hours. The connectors were found to be free from damage following cold exposure, and the insertion-loss measurements were all under 1dB.

Betsy Ziobron is a freelance writer in Westbrook, Conn., who frequently covers the cabling infrastructure market.

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