1. Mooring Sensor Network for Ocean Observatories: Continuous, Adaptive Profiling – Development Status Report –
Bruce M. Howe,
Timothy McGinnis, Jason Gobat
Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington
Roger Lukas, Univ Hawaii
Emmanuel Boss, Univ Maine
Ocean Sciences
Honolulu
24 February 2006

3. Introduction
A major effort and cost in the lifetime of an ocean observatory system will be in the sensor networks
Here – the sensor network infrastructure part
Terminology:
Backbone infrastructure provides primary junction boxes/nodes
Sensor networks = (sensors/instruments + sensor network infrastructure)
A system integration problem – many components

4. Need for profiling moorings in ORION and ocean observatories
Reduce temporal and spatial aliasing in vertical sampling of the ocean, e.g., at tide and internal wave frequencies and space scales
Deliberately intensive sampling of fine vertical structure — Meddies/coherent eddies, biological thin layers, overflows, etc.
Sampling of episodic or otherwise non-stationary flow
Less expensive than many fixed instruments

5. Example: Fully loaded mooring (RFA Daly et al. 2005)
Two platforms for remote sensing and point instruments
Two profilers
Tomography source and receiver
Bottom instrument suite
Called for in many ORION RFA proposals (e.g., Barth, Daly, Dever, Duda, Send, Worcester, …)

6. ALOHA-MARS Observatory Mooring
Features
Enables adaptive sampling
Distributes power and communications capability throughout the water column
ROV servicing
Major Components
Subsurface float at ~165 m depth with sensor suite and junction box
Mooring profiler with sensor suite that can “dock” for battery charging, continuous two-way communications
Electro-optical-mechanical mooring cable
Seafloor sensor suite and junction box
Deployments
June 2006 on Seahurst Observatory in Puget Sound, 30 m depth
on MARS in Monterey Bay, 900 m depth

7. FLOAT
ASSEMBLY
Instrument
Package
ADCP
Secondary node
Center Ti Post

8. INSTRUMENT PACKAGE
BB2F
SIIM
CTDO2

9. SWIVEL Float Ti Post Oil Reservoir All Electrical “D” Plate
EO Converter
Mooring Cable
Termination
Electrical and Optical
Primary Winding

10. MMP Secondary Winding Concentrated on Inductive power coupler
S&K Engineering
~3 mm gap
Efficiency ~65%
200 W transfer
50 kHz
MMP electronics includes 16 V battery charging

11. Seafloor Secondary Node
Stainless steel electronics case (on-hand, full ocean depth)
PC-104 controller
400-48V dc (Vicor)
MOSFET and deadface switches, software controlled
Ground fault detection a la MARS
8-port 100baseT Ethernet switch
Two guest ports
Removable ballast
ROV-mateable
connectors
Electronics
ROV “fork” slots
Fiberglass grating

12. Deck Frame Requires DP ship
Mooring winch
Trawl winch
Load transfers
Anchor first
Rail system – moves float and mooring cable in and out
Lays on fantail
Bolts to 2-ft pattern
Float and Ti post locked during prep

14. Acceleration, attitude
Sensors Components
BB2F
Connectors
CTDO2
ADCP 150 kHz
Video-cam
RS-232-Ethernet
ACM

15. Schedule First test MARS Location Seahurst, Puget Sound June 2006
Deploy summer 2007
MARS Node
HydroGeo Borehole
Seismo Borehole
MOBB
Proposed Aloha Site
UTM: E, N
36 41’ ”N ’ ”W

16. Other possible users Jack Barth – upper ocean profiler
Jeff Nystuen – ocean ambient sound
Peter Worcester – vertical line array
Ken Smith – bottom rover
Tom Sanford, Doug Luther – HPIES
John Horne – fisheries sonar
Lee Freitag – acoustic modem/nav/comms

17. AMM animation - docking