N092-099 TITLE: Protective Technologies and Installation/Implementation Methods for Undersea Instrumentation

TECHNOLOGY AREAS: Ground/Sea Vehicles, Materials/Processes, Sensors

ACQUISITION PROGRAM: PMA-264 Air Anti Submarine Warfare Systems

OBJECTIVE: Develop innovative approaches to protecting bottom mounted acoustic instrumentation against commercial dragging equipment used in bottom fishing.

DESCRIPTION: Worldwide threats have driven probable conflict areas from deep waters to more shallow environments necessitating training ranges in these areas. The installation of tracking sensors in the same shallow water environments where commercial fishing activity occurs represents a design challenge to protect cables, sensors, and electronic assemblies. These devices are connected by hybrid telecommunications cables at great depths and are subject to threats which may include trawl gear, pots, long lines and related fishing equipment which interact with the ocean bottom.

In addition to Navy tracking sensors, there is a demand for data in areas where fishing activity is a serious concern. Further research is needed for the development of Trawl Resistant Bottom Mounts (TRBMs) enclosures that can be adapted to house a variety of sensor packages designed for protecting oceanographic instrumentation from trawler gear. These instrument platforms should be suited for use with up looking sensors such as, hydrophones, Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers and provide sufficient space for other instrumentation including seismic and other measurement sensors. Universal housings offering these capabilities are of significant interest to the oil and gas ocean mining industries as well as research communities for ocean exploration, monitoring and environmental research. The threat of bottom trawling is universal. An example of this is illustrated with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) implementation of the Monterey Accelerated Research System (MARS). MARS is the first deep-sea cabled observatory offshore of the continental United States. There is the desire to extend ocean observatory applications to shallow water environments while protecting the infrastructure from fishing threats.

Innovative approaches to protective technologies and installation methods for mitigating threats to distributed undersea acoustic tracking instrumentation are sought. Proposed solutions may consider the integraton of a combination of mechanical materials to provide a low profile device to minimize entanglement, snaring, movement or damage from fishing equipment while maintaining a clear wide band acoustic aperture for range tracking and communications signals. Instrumentation packages consist of electronic assemblies measuring acoustic signals which transmit to shore processing facilities by fiber optical cables. The ability to maintain a viable acoustic sensor performance aperture over the entire acoustic field of view, i.e. +/- 80 degrees from vertical, is judged a key challenge for this effort. These performance requirements are unique to the navy''''s undersea tracking systems. There are two areas especially where existing systems are insufficient. First, the protection hardware is designed for single, stand-alone instrumentation packages that are not physically interconnected with cables. This is a dramatic design challenge, both mechanically and from an installation perspective. Second, the acoustic response pattern for undersea tracking requires responsiveness in all directions. Existing protective devices such as those for Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers only look upwards through the water column with an acoustic 'beam'.

Developed devices must be capable of integration and installation with distributed sensor systems in water depths from 100 to 2000 feet in depth with integrated power and instrumentation cables between sensors for power and data. Proposed designs should protect the instrumentation while preserving the acoustic detection and transmission functionality necessary over bandwidths from nominally 100 Hz to 50 KHz. Designs that are integrated pre-installation with the instrumentation should be considered along with capabilities that could be installed after the initial laydown of the tracking instrumentation and cable systems. This system should be capable of protecting instrumentation installed in water depths up to 2000 feet for a period up to 20 years or more.

PHASE I: Develop a concept for protecting undersea instrumentation against threats and hazards due to fishing activity. Perform analytical analysis to characterize the physical limits of these threats as an input to the design of the protective system. Demonstrate feasibility of the proposed conceptual designs, integration techniques and installation methods.

PHASE II: Develop a prototype protection system and demonstrate its ability to protect the undersea tracking instrumentation while preserving the acoustic, electrical and mechanical functionality of the nodes for their primary application. Develop detailed design drawings and demonstrate installation techniques and methods. Identify any specialized installation equipment.

PHASE III: Transition the technology to undersea training ranges to be situated in littoral environments where bottom fishing activity is present. Possible environments include locations off the Eastern coast of the continental United States, and Southern California off of San Clemente Island.

PRIVATE SECTOR COMMERCIAL POTENTIAL: This technology would be generally applicable to undersea instrumentation of any type in areas where commercial fishing activity is present.

REFERENCES:
1. Hansen, Kurt and Valdemarsen, John Willy, "Self-spreading ground gear � technical features and practical applications in demersal trawl gears" SINTEF Fisheries and Aquaculture, The North Sea Centre. Sept 2007

2. Kery, S and J.D. Irish, "Trawl Resistant Bottom Mounted Instrumentation: Developments and Results to Date," Proc. Oceans �96, 640-645, 1996.

3. DeAlteris, J.; Vincent, H.; Kaiser, R., "A seabed platform for long-term monitoring in the littoral environment," OCEANS ''''96. MTS/IEEE. ''''Prospects for the 21st Century''''. Conference Proceedings , vol.3, no., pp.1237-1241 vol.3, 23-26 Sep 1996

4. Dessureault, J.-G.; Belliveau, D.J.; Young, S.W., "Design and tests of a trawl-resistant package for an acoustic Doppler current profiler," Oceanic Engineering, IEEE Journal of, vol.16, no.4, pp.397-401, Oct 1991

5. http://www.mbari.org/news/news_releases/2008/mars-live/mars-live.html

KEYWORDS: Undersea; Instrumentation; Acoustic; Fishing; Cables; Tracking

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