Tracking coastal erosion

News

UK collaboration develops system designed to gather and wirelessly transmit coastal erosion data from beneath the sea. Siobhan Wagner reports.

A new sensor communication system that directly transmits data from underwater sensors to shoreline bases claims to monitor more closely the effects climate change has on coastal erosion.

The technology is the result of an 18-month UK industry and academic collaboration.

Sensors on the seabed around the UK's coastline would gather data such as temperature, pH levels and sediment movement. This information would be fed to an underwater radio modem that transmits the data wirelessly to an onshore radio modem connected to a PC.

The backbone of the technology comes from project partner

(WFS) a Scots developer of underwater electronic communications, sensing and navigation technology.

The company's underwater radio modem uses a magnetic loop antenna capable of generating an electromagnetic field of under 9kHz. The data is encoded in the magnetic component detected by a second sensitive receiver loop.

The signal is enhanced with digital signal processing.

Ian Crowther, general manager of environmental and industrial division at WFS, said one of his company's underwater broadband modems has been proven to transmit signals at speeds of 1mb/sec.

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