Buoy Design

Currently the commercial fishing industry relies on low-bandwidth options like the ARGOS or INMARSAT satellite constellations for information telemetry from either ship-to-shore or ship-to-ship nodes. Data throughputs in the low kilobits per second (Kbps) range are typical and satisfy bandwidth requirements for common ocean sensors. However, these solutions suffer from an inability to evolve into content delivery mechanisms upon which robust high-speed data networks will be built to enhance the state of the art in research related to fisheries and ocean processes. Furthermore, there is no channel to support underwater telemetry at the present time. As the use of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) grows in this industry, provisions will need to be made to facilitate operator-driven intervention from shore or surface nodes in addition to AUV inter-communication over large distances.

To overcome this bandwidth deficit, we propose to design a small, cheap buoy system whose primary purpose will be to facilitate high-bandwidth communication in air and provide for telemetry underwater. The buoy will have an onboard computer and be supplanted with traditional environmental sensors, all in a package that is capable of being deployed off a small boat. For the airborne radio frequency data transmission, we have chosen the 802.11b wireless standard, which is capable of 1.5Mbps at ranges up to 3 kilometers with off-the-shelf components. Experiments will be conducted using amplified circuitry to increase this range and data throughput. The underwater link will use Utility Acoustic Modems (UAMs) designed and built by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI). We plan on conducting an oceanographic survey with one of our AUVs within proximity of a deployed buoy to demonstrate the real-time intervention capability of the UAM with the AUV.