ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 19 -- United States Patent no. 12,332,394, issued on June 17, was assigned to NEC Corp. (Tokyo).

"Fiber sensing using supervisory path of submarine cables" was invented by Fatih Yaman (Princeton, N.J.), Yue-Kai Huang (Princeton, N.J.), Ezra Ip (West Windsor, N.J.), Hussam Batshon (Monroe, N.J.), Eduardo Mateo Rodriguez (Tokyo), Kohei Nakamura (Tokyo), Takanori Inoue (Tokyo) and Yoshihisa Inada (Tokyo).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Earthquake detection via fiber sensing is provided using using a supervisory path of submarine cables wherein the supervisory system/path of a submarine optical cable conveys portion(s) of an optical signal back to an origin location periodical...