Design of a Novel Fully Automatic Ocean Spectra Acquisition and Control System Based on the Real-Time Solar Angle Analyzing and Tracking

The current manual spectra acquisition for monitoring water constituents has resulted in discontinuous data acquisition, insufficient amount of data, and small ocean coverage. This article presents the design of a novel fully automatic ocean spectra acquisition and control system based on the real-time solar angle analyzing and tracking. To ensure that the requirements for spectra acquisition are met, the system is capable of accurately calculating the solar angle by collecting the information of latitude, longitude, date, time and direction, and automatically adjusting the position of instrument observation plane and the pointing angle of fiber optic probe in real-time. It achieves full automation of collecting the downward radiance of skylight, the upward radiance from reference panel and seawater separately through controlling the rotation of fiber optic probe. A 188-day observation experiment was carried out at the coastal ocean experimental station in Qingdao from September 11, 2018 to March 17, 2019. After that, the system was conducted onboard the Dongfanghong 3 scientific research vessel for a one-month demonstration and sea trial in June 2019. Comparative experiments including manual spectra collection, chlorophyll-a sensor measurement, and water samples collection were carried out. The experimental results show that the relative error of the spectra between the system and manual collection is less than 5%, and the relative error of the remote sensing reflectance calculated by the spectra is less than 4%. Considering the chlorophyll-a concentration obtained by the sensor and the water samples as the true value, the relative error of the chlorophyll-a concentration obtained by the system is 10% and 25% respectively. The results show its full and reliable capacity in collecting spectra of seawater automatically and continuously in real-time, with satisfactory accuracy and timeliness.