General Dynamics Electric Boat has been designing and building submarines since 1899, beginning with USS Holland, the U.S. Navy’s first commissioned undersea warship. Since that time, the company has been dedicated to delivering the most capable submarines in the world by emphasizing technical excellence, innovation, and responsiveness to customer requirements.
The Casualty Control (CASCON) System is an alarming and communication platform used on US Naval vessels during repairs, retrofitting, or when shipboard systems are disabled or outdated. The system provides an emergency notification and communications network for secure alarming. CASCON is mandatory for submarines and surface vessels as described in the NAVSEA 8010 Standard.
General Dynamics used fiber to enable audio and data transport for use in a large-scale 24/7 CASCON system and sought a solution to address the unique signal types involved including Audio and Serial Data (RS-232/422/485) over multimode fiber.
Fiber is an ideal choice for data and audio transport across an ever-changing industrial environment due to its high capacity, light weight, low loss, reliability, immunity to electrical interference, and a high level of data security.
General Dynamics used a fiber backbone in its CASCON System design, installing Artel’s
FiberLink 5200 systems, which support bidirectional audio, RS-type serial data, ethernet, and contact closure over a single fiber transmitter/receiver pair.
In addition to ensuring stable, predictable, long-term performance, the FiberLink 5200 series readily handles the multiple signal types being transmitted over fiber to support this vital, and mandated, shipyard safety system.
The Artel FL5200/5201 units that handle audio and RS-485 traffic from a central controlling station to 16 independent worksites throughout the shipyard. Each worksite has up to 20 emergency alert boxes, for a shipyard potential of 320. These boxes allow anyone, in an emergency, to trigger an alarm and communicate with a specially trained Central CASCON operator.
By incorporating the Artel FiberLink 5200/5201 systems into the onboard fiber transport network, General Dynamics Electric Boat has resolved the signal integrity challenges in moving audio and data across its shipyard facility.
As a result, the company can be confident in its ongoing ability to meet the stringent requirements of modern submarine construction.
The successful deployment of our FiberLink 5200 series by General Dynamics Electric Boat is another example of how Artel helps customers to address key requirements for projects in the government space.
We’re committed to providing reliable, high-performance fiber solutions, and it’s great to see FiberLink deliver on that promise for General Dynamics Electric Boat.
