A networked/autonomous receiving array system

A new hydrophone array and recording system has been developed at the SIO Marine Physical Laboratory for the collection of multi-channel broadband acoustic data at sea. Five of these systems have been constructed and successfully deployed at sea from a variety of research ships during several recent experiments. The typical array configuration is 16 elements at 3.75 m spacing for a total aperture of 56.25 m, but the arrays can be reconfigured with up to 64 hydrophones at any element spacing. The system can be deployed in a completely autonomous fashion or in conjunction with a surface buoy that provides remote system control and access to acoustic data files. The technical details of the arrays and recording systems as well as the different deployment configurations and techniques will be provided. In addition, a general description of the use of these systems for geoacoustic inversion and acoustic data communications research will be provided.