Innovative oceanographic sensor technology for use in air deployable buoy systems

Oceanographic environmental sensor technology is being investigated under the sponsorship of the Office of Naval Research and the Naval Air Warfare Center. The focus of this investigation is air-deployable, expendable sensors and includes: (1) Ocean Optical Property Sensor (OOPS) designed to measure both the volume backscatter function, Beta and the diffuse attenuation coefficient, K, simultaneously; both measurements employ an LED light source for low weight and power consumption; (2) Ocean Current Profile Sensors employing Phased Array technology; (3) GPS-equipped Surface Floats for determining the ocean surface current; (4) high frequency ocean bottom sediment classifiers which use the echo information from standard ship-board fathometers to auto-classify the bottom sediment. This report gives design details of each sensor along with a description of their capabilities, packaging layouts for both moored and free-floating buoy designs, system architectures, including in-buoy data processing and control and external telemetry utilizing LEO commercial satellites. Prototype sensors have been designed, fabricated and successfully tested in a series of shallow water ocean exercises. Test results are presented and compared with conventional reference sensors to validate the sensor performance. Future sensor development plans are proposed with a view toward employing a global network of precision in-water sensors, moored and free-floating, to provide real-time data flow to the world's oceanographic community.