1. Marshall Earle, Ph.D., Principal Investigator Mike Brown, Lead Electrical Engineer Jeffrey Gallagher, Electrical Engineer (Bill Hughes, Lead Mechanical Engineer) AN EASILY DEPLOYED AND RECOVERED GPS-TRACKED WATER LEVEL BUOY USM GPS Workshop - March 2004 NOAA SMALL BUSINESS INNOVATION RESEARCH (SBIR) PHASE II PROJECT

2. GPS-TRACKED BUOY

3. KEY SPECIFICATIONS Weight in air with battery packs 110 kg  Diameter of hull 0.89 m  Height with radio antenna 1.37 m  Height w/o antenna 0.97 m Nearly spherical hull with polycarbonate and anodized 6061T0 aluminum hemispheres, non-pinching gasket seal with stainless steel bolts, navigation light  Operating life1 month Operating Temperature Range-30 o C to +60 o C Outputs: water level, significant wave height, average wave period, Data Quality Control (DQC) parameters See the preliminary specification sheet for additional information.

4. KEY COMPONENTS Topcon Legacy E GPS  Topcon LegAnt GPS / GLONASS antennas  Microwave Data Systems narrow band CPFSK transceiver, operating at 410.0625 MHz (frequency band assigned to NOAA)  Onset Computer Tattletale Model 8 microprocessor  Texas Instruments MSP-430 microcontroller  MuRata ENV-05DB-52 angular rate sensors (3)  Crossbow Technology CXL02TG3 tri-axial accelerometer Carmanah Technologies 701 solar powered navigation light

5. BUOY IN SMALL PICKUP TRUCK BEFORE FIELD TEST

6. DOME REMOVAL / REPLACING

7. UPPER PLATE COMPONENTS

8. LOWER PLATE AND ELECTRONICS UNIT

9. ELECTRONICS UNIT INTERNAL VIEW

10. ELECTRONICS UNIT LABELLED COMPONENTS

11. BATTERY PACK REMOVAL / REPLACING

12. BUOY EXPLODED VIEW

13. BUOY CROSS SECTIONAL VIEW

14. PLANNED BUOY MODIFICATIONS

15. EXAMPLE BUOY MOORING

16. EXAMPLE SCREEN SHOT OF BUOY USER INTERFACE Data steps are due to changing the buoy's water level in a test tank.

17. BUOY ELECTRONICS SHORE STATION ELECTRONICS WATER LEVEL CALCULATION FLOWCHART ELECTRONIC AND DATA ANALYSIS DESIGN

18. BASE STATION SETUP ON WAVELAND BEACH

19. CHECKING THE BUOY ON THE BEACH VIA ITS INFRA-RED PORT

20. REFERENCING TO BENCHMARK PANAMA CITY BEACH, FL, 1 Shore base station installed at benchmark.

21. REFERENCING TO BENCHMARK PANAMA CITY BEACH, FL, 2 Shore base station antenna installed in final position.

22. PANAMA CITY BEACH, FL, DATA COMPARISON Error detection routine later added to remove infrequent spikes.

23. SMALL NOAA HYDROGRAPHIC VESSEL USED FOR CHESAPEAKE BAY, MD, DEPLOYMENT

24. BUOY DEPLOYMENT CHESAPEAKE BAY, MD

25. DEPLOYED BUOY CHESAPEAKE BAY, MD

26. CHESAPEAKE BAY, MD, DATA COMPARISON Infra-red port lockup caused some data loss (corrected in operational design).

27. WATER LEVEL DATA COMPARISONS Panama City Beach, FL RMS difference (including mean difference)3.76 cm RMS difference (mean removed)1.96 cm Chesapeake Bay, MD Mean difference determined and removed at start of data collection. RMS difference1.45 cm

28. WAVES (NOT MAIN RESEARCH GOAL) Wave height accuracy +/- 0.2 m (could reach +/- 0.1 m) Wave period accuracy +/- 1.0 s (could reach +/- 0.5 s) SignificantWave Height Average Wave Period

29. SUMMARY A GPS-tracked water level buoy that can be easily deployed and recovered from small or large vessels has been successfully designed, built, and field tested. The buoy is ready for transition to operational use to support hydrographic surveys and other applications.