NOARL Autonomous Acoustic Arrays

The Versatile Experimental Data Acquisition Buoy System (VEDABS) has been the primary acoustic measurement system for ASW Environmental Acoustic Support (AEAS) program. The self-recording nature of VEDABS has enabled AEAS to make long-term ambient noise measurements as well as single-ship propagation measurements. The primary component of VEDABS which allows long-term storage of the time series data is a very low speed magnetic tape recorder. The characteristics of the recorder which allow long record time create problems during processing and limit the flexibility of the system. With the introduction of helical scan magnetic recorders, it became possible to design a VEDABS-like system based on digital filtering and recording with none of the drawbacks associated with analog direct recording. In addition to eliminating the drawback in processing, the development of a digital recording has allowed an increase in the number of channels recorded. This increase in flexibility, dynamic range and in number of channels will provide PIS the equipment to collect very different data sets. This paper will present the merits of the new digital recording system with emphasis on system flexibility.