Why access ADCP data remotely?

ADCPs have been used by the commercial and academic community alike for around half a century, but today there is an ongoing desire and increasing demand of users to access ADCP data remotely. With an integrated acoustic modem and Edge data processing functionality, Origin ADCPs provide a solution.

What are the benefits of remote ADCP-data access and what requirements does this meet?

The major benefits and reasons for the increasing requirement for remote / in situ ADCP-data access are four-fold:

• It enables on-site implementation of quality checks / control tests required to establish best-practice and data assurance.
• It enables near real-time operations for customisation and optimisation of procedures.
• It enables near real-time monitoring for time-critical decision-making.
• It supports post-capture data harvesting for (actionable) insights during monitoring periods, without the need for device recovery. This includes using a USV to reduce cost, carbon output and safety risk.

What is the present reality?

The present reality for the majority of subsea ADCP deployments is the system is deployed for a period of time to gather data and is then retrieved for data offload and analysis. A major limitation of this mode of operation being that users can only inspect data and confirm its validity once the device has been recovered, which risks compromised or even lost data.

To overcome this limitation, ADCPs can be deployed alongside an acoustic modem to enable remote communications. However, there are cost and risk implications to this approach, e.g. prevention of substantial/full data transfer via acoustic telemetry primarily due to limited bandwidth, and integration costs and complexity. Cabled operation is another alternative, but suffers from additional risk of damage to the cable, electrical noise pickup from mechanically coupled infrastructure, and is unsuitable in some environments such as deep water or dynamic sites.

What is the Sonardyne solution?

The Origin series of ADCPs combine a stand-alone ADCP with integrated acoustic modem and customisable Edge data processing functionality for delivery of remote ADCP-data access and all of the associated benefits.
In more detail, Edge data processing permits customisation and size-optimisation of ADCP data during the instrument’s deployment. This essential data can then be exported over the acoustic modem. Ultimately, Edge will maximise the performance of the modem in a ‘critical information’ data transfer capacity, and will give unprecedented ability to change in-field functionality and retrieve relevant data without recovering the ADCP.
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Contact support@sonardyne.com for more information.