Data acquisition system design of shear probe for ocean turbulence measurement

Shear probe can be used to measure ocean turbulence. In order to acquire weak signal produced by shear probe, two DAQ systems are designed. One is VI system, and the other is MCU system. The VI system which is used in lab is programmed by LabVIEW. The system is precise and flexible. In order to compare performances of different shear probes, coherence processing program is developed. Experiment in lab shows that the weak signal can be acquired accurately and the performances of probes can be compared successfully by VI system. According to the constraints of marine survey using the shear probe, the MCU system is developed which is based on MSC1210 and LPC2114 microprocessors. In this system, SD card is used to store data of shear probes. The MCU system has small size, large storage capacity and low power consumption. Sea trials show that MCU system can acquire the weak signal of shear probe accurately for long time in ocean environment.