A Simple Low Cost Acoustic Current Meter

Abstract

to advance significantly it is essential that observations at sea be more closely spaced, both in time and space. The high cost of existing current meters, mooring systems and the ships to deploy them is limiting our ability to collect adequate data and hence our understanding of oceanography and climatology. Satellite telemetry has facilitated obtaining data from remote sensors. Hence the oceanographic community is considering expendable moorings, air dropped moorings and possibly moorings deployed from "ships of opportunity". Regardless of which method is used, current meters must be much less expensive, consume much less battery power, be much smaller, lighter and reliable than existing instruments. It should be noted that the size and weight of current meters adversely effects the size and cost of the moorings and the cost of deploying the resulting system.