Development of an Electro Impedance Tomography-based Platform for Measurement of burial Depth of Cables in Subsea Sediments

Cables buried in the seabed are objects of interests especially as companies have to verify that the buried depth of the cables is in the expected range, typically 1 m. Although several measurement systems have been designed in the past, there is no solution available that provides an accuracy of ±10 cm for this purpose. In our approach we suggest to model and measure the electrical field and electrical impedance to determine the depth of a sea cable. In the first step we develop an electrical static field model for analytic investigations. We validate the model by a simulation tool and provide results for critical environmental parameters that affect our measurement accuracy.