Development of a versatile platform for long-term underwater acoustic monitoring

Abstract

The requirement for acoustic monitoring of marine environments has increased in recent years due to the desire of both scientists and governments to understand how anthropogenic noise affects marine fauna. The available technology is also improving constantly, which allows new approaches and methods to be used in tackling the above requirement. This modern technology allows a platform to be developed which is capable of not only recording underwater acoustic signals but also processing them in real-time on board a device which is self-contained, battery powered and deployable to the sea floor. This opens up many possibilities, such as using data compression to enable high bandwidth signals (400kSamples/s) to be transmitted over narrow radio-frequency channels. It also allows automated signal analysis to be performed and results (from third-octave noise levels to an impact estimation) to be presented in a timely fashion to decision makers - allowing mitigation actions to be taken. As technological progress continues, ever more complex problems will be tackled by such devices without the need for on-shore computer processing. Results will be presented for the development of platform technologies to allow real-time broadband processing of impact relevant data and subsequent storage and communication.