Data Acquisition in Oceanographic Research Vessels

This paper describes the design and the development of a new real time data acquisition system which focuses on oceanographic research. The system has been implemented in several Spanish oceanographic platforms (vessels and land-sites) using very reliable MESH network that can still operate when one node breaks down or a connection goes bad. Service Oriented Architecture allows expandable access to real time and historical data. This system is applicable to any network of instrumentation where an integrated management of data and a wide range of access procedures are needed. We can frame these data acquisition system in a satellite communications environment both VSAT (C band) and TNX75 (X band). The target domain off these projects is to provide long-range data and optimize satellite communications resources. The challenging issue is to achieve cross-platform data-generating infrastructure, which in an optimized use of system resources and provide real time information to the user without depending on the location in which to generate or produce them. The project is focused mainly in relation to the acquisition of data, such as an integrated system of generation of data with a multilayer structure for accessing data consulting services, all using communications via satellite. To this day, we fully integrated platform and running, and we are expanding the services and optimizing the end-user interfaces with these new services. The eyelet of this document is to provide global technical community the current status in Spain, in regard to oceanographic data generation and exploitation of the same by the scientific community, from both the oceanographic vessels located anywhere of the world from locations ashore.