Patent ID: 7437070

Claim:
A submarine observation apparatus, comprising: an observation unit configured to observe a submarine environment; a control signal branching unit configured to branch a part of a wavelength-multiplexed light signal which includes control signals to control the observation unit; an optical amplification unit configured to amplify the wavelength-multiplexed light signal input thereto; a first branching unit configured to branch amplified fixed-wavelength light, which is assigned to said submarine observation apparatus, from the amplified wavelength-multiplexed light signal input thereto; a modulating unit configured to modulate an intensity of said amplified fixed-wavelength light branched by said first branching unit with observation information observed by said observation unit; and a combining unit configured to combine the amplified wavelength-multiplexed light signal passing through said first branching unit and the amplified fixed-wavelength light modulated by said modulating unit into a composite light signal, and configured to output the composite light signal.