Subsea data communications using non-insulated steel wire

Small firms Merit Award for Research & Technology project was awarded to investigate technology to overcome the limitations of data communication between sub-sea instrumentation and the surface when Sonar is unreliable.

Marine operators, such as Fisheries and Marine Survey, require data communication from sub-sea towed electronic sensors used in the collection of environmental and mapping information. These sensors require specialist umbilical cables or Sonar telemetry to pass the data to the control point.

The umbilical cable has proven to be the more reliable of the two, Sonar telemetry suffering from signal loss when used in the vicinity of the propellers, i.e. Sonar signals cannot communicate through aerated water formed at the propellers.

This project will allow an alternative method to be investigated using existing steel tow cable to act as a transmission medium passing data to the surface. The benefits of  reduced cost and reliability will allow data to be collected in acoustically noisy environments.

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